


Draw Your Swords

by Sarai of Umardelin (anissa7118)



Series: Teach Me How to Fight, I'll Show You How to Win [3]
Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-22 04:32:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 71,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11372643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anissa7118/pseuds/Sarai%20of%20Umardelin
Summary: 15 years after the events of Labyrinth, Sarah Williams believes she has her life well in hand: a career that speaks to her deepest heart, close relationships with most of her family, a New York loft all her own. What more could one ask? Well, maybe the answer to where a child in her care, missing under the most unusual and familiar circumstances, might have gone...





	1. Careful What You Wish For

They all said she was a dreamer as if it was some kind of insult, but Sarah Williams had the determination to chase those dreams all the way to Los Angeles. Straight out of high school, she took all the money in her savings account and _ran_ after that dream, full of hope and just a bit of amazement at her own audacity. Sure, her senior year she’d been voted ‘most likely to win an Oscar’, but that was just the opinion of her theater class.

 _Chasing_ dreams was one thing. Catching them turned out to be a bit more difficult. She’d decided to get at least her associate’s degree, knowing that college would give her something to fall back on if Hollywood didn’t recognize her genius. That was her father’s practicality showing through, and he _had_ suggested it to her, but Sarah was the one who agreed. Her mother, when she’d been told of the plan, had airily dismissed college as something Sarah didn’t need. “If you only knew how many people flipping burgers have their bachelor’s, dear,” she’d chuckled. Sarah wouldn’t be dissuaded, though; once her father had talked her into it, her stubbornness prevailed. Besides, she was too aware that Linda had dropped out of college in the first semester to have Sarah herself.

Trying to take classes, bus tables, and get to cattle calls, all at the same time, wore her thin. Sarah was once so frazzled that she almost recited her chemistry homework instead of the monologue she was supposed to read. The summer came as a relief, and since she was only taking one class—and that online, an easy art history elective—Sarah took her mother up on the invitation to spend the summer with her in Boston, where her theater company was putting on _Antigone_.

Looking back, that summer was a defining part of her life. Linda, whom she’d idolized since she was old enough to talk and wanted to grow up to be _just like_ , turned out to not be very grown-up herself. Oh, she was a whirlwind of sophistication, knew all the best restaurants and had a taste for fine wines, she could talk international politics or modern art with aplomb, but Linda couldn’t load a dishwasher and had never created a household budget. Sarah found herself by turns astounded and dismayed by her mother, and wondered briefly, uncharitably, what her life would’ve been like if she’d grown up living with Linda. At times she felt as if _she_ were the mother and this lovely, youthful-eyed woman was her fey and frustrating daughter.

The summer visit got cut short, and Sarah found herself at home with Dad and Karen and Toby again, where everything was boringly practical. She even overheard the same kinds of arguments about why she wasn’t dating, although by then she’d begun to understand that Karen’s vehemence against her going to Los Angeles had more to do with the crime rate there than anything else. She let Karen’s nattering float by her unregarded, something she hadn’t been able to do four or five years ago.

There was no way Sarah could explain why she didn’t have a steady boyfriend, anyway. Oh, there’d been boys, in high school and since, but none of them had quite measured up to the standards of her hazy, half-remembered dreams. Not one of them made her feel like a princess, the way love was supposed to feel, and her forays into sex fell similarly short of the ideal. Besides, there just hadn’t been _time_ , that first year in L.A.

(Never mind _those_ dreams. They weren’t real. They _weren’t_ , dammit. And she was too old for such silliness, even at nineteen-going-on-twenty she was too grown-up for that. When she talked to the mirror in the depths of the night, it was only her own subconscious answering her, Psych 101 told her that. And when she laid down alone, it was only a figment of her loneliness that warmed the bed beside her. That was the truth, that was reality, fantasy was for children—and she’d stopped being a child at the age of fifteen.)

She went back, to Los Angeles and to work and to college, determined to win. But Sarah was as defiant of the concept of the casting couch as she’d once been of a labyrinth (and its master), and her independent spirit meant she couldn’t take the easy path of letting someone exploit her. Sarah won roles with her striking looks and her talent, and even got a speaking part in a film that was later nominated for an Academy Award. But it too quickly became clear to her that success as an actress would either take too many years of scraping by, or require her to sacrifice too many of her principles.

Giving up on her dream job was painful, as growth often was. She could’ve brazened it out, yes, but along the way she’d found something else to love. Sarah had taken the psychology elective because its time slot was convenient to her schedule, but she found it fascinating. Puzzling out the twists and turns a mind could take was as heady a rush as stepping onto a stage, and the wide-eyed look in someone’s eyes when her insight rang true was as much a triumph as thundering applause. As a counselor, she could do something _really_ meaningful, and her career would be determined more by her skill than by fickle fame.

Sarah threw herself into it, feeling as though she’d found her place in the world at last. Even her acting training came in handy; she had to pretend serenity while her heart bled, and she could guide others in various techniques for unlocking emotions they couldn’t express otherwise. She was  _good_ at this, and soon told herself it was the career she’d meant to pursue all along.

Looking for an internship, she stumbled into social work, and children’s welfare. _That_ was like a sweet well, from which she drank long and deep. Some echo of her fantasy life whispered that she’d always been a savior of children, but she’d learned to shut that little voice up. During her waking hours, at least. She had a gift for working with kids, even the damaged ones, and sooner or later they all turned to her with open arms. 

Even the horrors she saw in this line of work didn’t dissuade her. The dramatic stuff—a little boy who’d seen his mother shot to death right in front of him, with her blood still tacky on his shirt when Sarah first met him—only made her angry and determined. She fought for the kids, armored in her expertise and sheer stubbornness. The more banal side of it threatened to burn her out, but she fought past that as well, engaging blank-eyed kids with stories half-drawn from her own childhood dreams.

She ended up in New York City, an easy drive from where she’d grown up, and working for an agency that contracted with Child Protective Services. It was fulfilling work that carried her through her twenties, and she was happy with her life, with the little world she’d built for herself. Her coworkers respected her, although they liked to tease her about her one idiosyncrasy.

Sarah saw barn owls  _everywhere_ . Even in the heart of the city, far from the kind of habitat they needed, she saw them perched on rooftops or soaring over parks. One late evening at work, one of them flew up to the break room window sill and sat there staring in, bobbing its head. The rest of the office was enchanted, cooing back at the pretty bird, but Sarah had sneered. “For most of history, owls have been considered evil omens. The ancient Greeks and Romans thought owls foretold death,” she informed the rest, steadfastly ignoring the window. “In Middle Eastern folklore, they represent the souls of the unquiet dead, and seeing one means destruction and ruin. In Europe, they were considered the familiars of witches, like black cats and toads. In England, poets called barn owls the birds of doom, and if you saw one at a sick person’s window it meant they were going to die. People used to kill them and nail them to barn doors to ward off the evil they brought.”

“Wow, Sarah,” Amy laughed—the oldest person in the office, and the closest thing Sarah had to a friend. Amy hated ‘all that New Age airy-fairy crap’ that some women believed in, but even she seemed to have found some wonder in her soul at the sight of the bird at their window. “I had no idea you were an owl hater. Come look, it’s pretty.”

“It’s a raptor. They eat mice, whole and headfirst, and cough up the bones and fur later like hairballs from hell,” Sarah spat back, not mentioning why she’d researched the biology and history and folklore of the species. “Barn owls don’t hoot, they screech, and it’s possible their calls gave rise to the myth of the banshee. They don’t even make their own nests. Sure, they’re pretty, but they’re also a pain in the ass.”

Laughter had greeted her bitterness, and from that day on Sarah was the unwilling recipient of dozens of owl-themed gifts. Little resin owls propped on her desk, owl stickers plastered on her files, even an owl-shaped coffee mug. She didn’t dare explain her eccentricity, just shoved the figurines onto a shelf and drank from the mug while cursing the birds in her mind.

And cursing a name, though she refused to admit that even to herself. She practiced  _psychology_ , she couldn’t be  _that_ crazy.

Except for the damned owls, her life was going well … until everything got turned upside down once again, by one foolish choice.

 


	2. Almost Forgot Your Name

“Sarah, there’s a cop here to see you.” That was Amy, poking her head around the door of Sarah’s office, keeping her voice low despite being eaten up by curiosity.

“Send him in,” Sarah replied, just as intrigued. She glanced at her desk, currently colonized by her overflowing in-tray, and decided it wasn’t worth cleaning up. Any space she freed would be taken over by notes and files, anyway.

The cop turned out to be a gold shield, Detective Rosenfield, but he shook her hand and said, “You can call me Mike, Mrs. Williams. We’re on the same side.”

 _He’s getting his good-cop game on ahead of time,_ she thought, but then, she was pretty sure he wanted something from the moment Amy announced his arrival. Cops didn’t show up to make small talk. Still, she smiled at him, and answered politely. “It’s Ms., and Sarah to you, if you like. Now, how can I help you?”

“I just have a few questions for you about the Merritt family. I understand, you have to protect your client’s confidentiality, but I think under the circumstances you’ll be inclined to help me out.” Even while he spoke in that chummy we’re-all-friends voice, his eyes were bright and sharp, darting around her office. Sarah pretended she couldn’t see him cataloging her certifications and degrees, keeping her expression blandly helpful.

Meanwhile alarms were going off in her head. The _Merritts_? They were about the last family on her current list of clients she would’ve expected to end up on the wrong side of the law. They had money problems and interpersonal problems and an older daughter who reminded her a bit too much of herself, in her directionless anger and frustration. That was just adolescence, though, and the worst Allison Merritt had done so far were typical teenage rebellions like skipping school and dyeing her hair. There was nothing about the Merritts that suggested imminent police involvement.

“I’ll be glad to help as much as I can,” was all Sarah told him, folding her hands neatly on her desk.

“Thank you, Ms. Williams,” Detective Rosenfield said, glancing at a notebook he’d taken out of his pocket. He’d decided not to use her given name, either, so he was trying to stay on the professional-courtesy side of things. “I’m told that you’ve counseled both the Merritt girls, fourteen-year-old Allison and two-year-old Lucy, is that true?” 

“Yes, I’ve worked with both of them,” Sarah replied evenly.

“What was your impression of the older girl?” And for all the casualness of the question, the cop’s eyes were fixed on her with more intensity than he probably meant to show.

“She’s a teenager,” Sarah said with a little shrug. She decided to be as vague as possible while still giving the impression of eager helpfulness; the detective hadn’t told _her_ anything yet. “That’s a difficult age, as I’m sure you know. We were all teenagers once, and I think all of us can benefit from a listening ear outside of their family and friends.”

“Would you say she’s a good kid?” he asked, his head tipped a little to one side.

_They’re all good kids,_ Sarah wanted to insist. She had only ever met one child who seemed beyond saving, and he hadn’t been her case anyway. Sociopaths did exist, after all, and she was glad she hadn’t had to work with one yet. At last she replied carefully, “Alli likes to  _think_ she’s big and bad, but she’s really just a kid. Her idea of ‘edgy’ is writing someone else’s name on the bathroom wall.”

That startled a chuckle from him, and Sarah thought some of the professional wariness was starting to dissolve. “I got kind of the same impression. I know kids her age who’re dealing drugs and stealing cars and shooting people. She’s not as hard as she wants to be.”

Sarah cocked her head, too, giving him the same curious look. “If that’s your impression, why ask me?”

He shrugged. “You do more of this than me. I could be wrong, God knows her own mom could be wrong, I see that enough, but I don’t think that you, me, and Mom are all wrong about the kid.”

“Was that all you wanted to know?” Sarah asked, a trifle disappointed. She would likely hear what happened from Alli herself at their next meeting, but the detective had piqued her interest now.

He’d been putting his notebook away, and paused for a fraction of an instant before looking back at her. “What does she think of her little sister?”

Sarah couldn’t help a rueful grin. “About what I thought of my baby brother, when I was fifteen and he was five months. That her parents are wasting what little attention they can spare on an obnoxious little crybaby who doesn’t do much more than eat, sleep, and poop. But that’s any normal teenage with a much younger sibling, Detective.”

He nodded. “I’ve got a little brother, too. Always was a pill. But when some kids in his class tried to bully him, I was right there, mad enough to send them all running. I bet you were the same way about your brother, right?”

“Oh, his entire grade knew not to screw with Toby Williams,” she laughed. “His big sister was in _high school_ , she’d tell _your parents_. And your teachers. And she’d tell all the girls in class that you cried when she said so, whether it was true or not, and you’d never hear the end of it from them.”

Detective Rosenfield laughed. “God, you were a mean one! I just roughed them up some. Funny how the older kid can’t stand the younger one, ‘til someone tries to hurt them. And then,  _watch out_ .”

“Alli’s like that about Lucy, too,” Sarah said. “She says she can’t stand her, but she’d fight to protect her. Is that what happened? Someone hit Lucy, and they’re trying to say it was Alli?” Later, she would scold herself for thinking that was the worst it could be.

The detective’s face fell, his genial humor vanishing. “If only. No, Lucy’s missing, gone right out of her bedroom last night. Alli was the only one home, and she says she didn’t see anyone. One minute the kid was in her bed, the next, she was gone. Procedure says it’s most likely someone in the family, the one who saw her last, but I didn’t think it could be the older girl. She doesn’t have that look about the eyes yet. She was freaked out and crying, but I didn’t think it was an act. The kid just … disappeared.”

_Oh, shit,_ Sarah thought, as icy fingers seemed to run up and down her spine. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, a door of memory began to rattle in its frame, a door that had been locked and barred and wallpapered over.

“Maybe I should talk to her,” she heard herself saying through numb lips. “Alli trusts me. She wouldn’t hurt Lucy, but she might know something that could help the case, and she’s more likely to tell me than you.”

“Thanks, Ms. Williams,” the detective said, and handed her his card. “The precinct phone, my home phone, and my cell are on there. If you get anything that could help, call me any time. I don’t care if it’s three in the morning.” He shook her hand a lot more warmly on the way out than he had on the way in.

Amy stopped by to ask what was going on, but one glance at the abstracted-turning-angry look on Sarah’s face, and she kept walking.

 


	3. Outside Looking In

Sarah knew in her bones that Allison would never hurt her sister. _Never_. The family might have its issues, but her intuition was rarely wrong. And Alli, for all her bad-girl bluster, was just a scared kid looking for some stability in her life. Her sister Lucy was the one person who completely adored her, and as much as she complained about the younger child, Sarah couldn’t believe she would _harm_ her.

She also couldn’t believe the suspicion trickling through her own subconscious mind. None of that was _real_ , and she was just fooling herself if paid any attention to it. Any similarities to her own relationship with Toby, and how it had changed seemingly in the span of a single day (in thirteen hours, actually), were just universal truths of humanity. Older siblings and younger siblings always had the same sorts of issues. There was absolutely, positively, _no way_ that her childhood fancies had come back around to haunt her.

It was just a book, a story she got too wrapped up in. Lots of kids had imaginary friends, and never mind that few teenagers did. All of that was part of her very active imagination, and a strong desire to escape her normal, boring, banal life that was typical of most adolescents.

It wasn’t real. None of it was real. Most especially not the king who’d haunted her dreams for years, until she finally forced herself to grow up, face the truth, and put an end to such silliness. All of her teenage daydreams were locked away deep in her mind, where they couldn’t poison the fulfilling and above all _rational_ life she’d built for herself. Those foolish dreams had already cost her one serious relationship, she wasn’t about to let them ruin anything else.

And yet, from the moment the detective said Lucy disappeared, those old memories— _dreams_ , dammit, only daydreams—kept trying to resurface. A stolen child, the older sister distraught, it all echoed too much of her own half-remembered past.

Because of that, and because it was her _job_ , Sarah had to get the truth, so she paid a call to the Merritt family that afternoon. In her early years of internship and practice, she’d been warned against getting too close to her clients, told to think of them as cases, but that hadn’t lasted long. They were children and families who needed her help, and she gave it gladly. For the Merritts, it was easier for her to visit their home than for them to come to her office, and that was where she drove as soon as she could clear enough appointments to get away.

They must’ve been expecting her, after Lucy’s disappearance, and Mrs. Merritt let her in with a teary smile. The house looked ransacked, first by frustrated parents slowly becoming afraid, then by police officers, all of them hunting for a small girl who tended to win at hide and seek.

Alli herself was sitting on the floor of her room putting together a puzzle, and Sarah joined her there. After a perfunctory greeting and Alli’s diffident invitation to help with the puzzle, neither of them spoke. Sarah wouldn’t insult the girl’s intelligence by pretending her visit wasn’t about Lucy, but she didn’t want to launch into an interrogation, either.

For a while, they worked in silence. It was one of the big three-thousand-piece puzzles that Alli liked; Sarah thought she enjoyed creating order and meaning out of the chaos of pieces. Alli had gotten almost all the edge pieces put together, while Sarah matched up blocks of bold color that resolved into gorgeous wildflowers.

“That cop thinks I did something to Lucy,” Alli finally said, low and hopeless.

“I don’t think you did,” Sarah said. “She’s a pest, like a lot of little sisters or brothers, but she’s _your_ sister. I don’t think you’d let anyone hurt her, if you could stop them.”

Alli stopped staring at the puzzle and fixed Sarah with furious eyes. Fury was better than numb despair, though. It was an emotion that inspired action, and it was one step closer to finding out what Alli knew. The girl’s face contorted with anger and imminent tears. “Shows what you know, then. I’m the reason she’s gone. It’s all my fault.”

“I doubt that,” Sarah told her.

“You would. You think everyone would be all right if we just sat down and talked about our problems.”

She chuckled at that accusation. “Not everyone. But talking does help a lot of the time. That’s why I try talking first, and kicking butt later.”

Alli stared at her for a long moment, then looked back at the puzzle. “It  _is_ my fault, though. The cop wouldn’t believe it, so I didn’t tell him, but it is. I’m the reason she’s gone.”

“Tell me why you think that, Alli. Please.” There was a trust between them, that Sarah would never laugh at her feelings, never mock her logic, and because of that Alli often told her things that she’d deny to anyone else.

When the girl spoke, at first Sarah couldn’t believe it. All the blood went out of her face, her fingers turned numb, and her ears rang. “What did you say?” she whispered.

“I wished her away,” Alli said, staring down at the puzzle pieces as if the answer was there. “There was this book, at the library, about a girl who got rid of her brother. I couldn’t read the whole thing, they won’t let me check out any more after I lost the last one, but I remember what it said.”

 _No. Oh, God, no, it can’t be._ “What did it say?” Sarah asked, lightly, her gut roiling. It wasn’t real, it was _never_ real, this couldn’t be. Goblins weren’t real, their king _definitely_ wasn’t real, the Labyrinth was just a story she told herself, and she’d stopped herself from having those stupid dreams _years_ ago. So it absolutely _could not be_ that the nonexistent king of the nonexistent goblins had stolen Lucy away. That was way beyond ridiculous, it was _insane_.

Alli chewed her thumbnail, long since worn down to the quick, but she didn’t seem to notice the pain. “Lucy wouldn’t quit bugging me. She came in my room and stole my makeup, and then I got in trouble for _having_ makeup, and she didn’t get in trouble for stealing, and she’s always crying and tattling on me, and I just _hated_ her. She’s such a snot. So I said the words in the book, but I never thought it’d really _happen_.”

Dreams that were really memories crept around the edges of Sarah’s conscious mind. A baby brother—only _half_ brother, really—who cried and cried, who drooled on her toys and screamed when she tried to quiet him. Thunder rolling outside, her own face in the mirror, and she’d deserved better than babysitting a little brat like him. If only he was gone… _It was all a dream!_ Sarah screamed in her own mind, while sniggering laughter echoed.

“The girl in the book said, ‘I wish the goblins would come and take you away right now,’ and they did,” Allie mumbled. “I was mad at Lucy, but goblins aren’t _real_. I said it but I didn’t really want her to be gone. Now it’s all my fault.” She didn’t cry out loud, but her shoulders hitched with stifled, silent sobs.

Sarah put her own breakdown on hold to hug the girl close. “It’s not your fault, Alli,” she soothed. While somewhere deep inside, a part of her growled, _You bastard_.

Once she’d soothed Alli and the session was over, Sarah headed straight to the library. The book, however, wasn’t on the shelves or in their catalog system. No one on the staff had ever heard of it. Sarah ground her teeth in fury, but her search was hopeless and she knew it.

It was getting dark as she left the library. Crossing the street, she saw a barn owl perched on a lamppost. The bird turned its head upside down to peer at her.

Sarah pitched her shoe at it.

 


	4. If I Break the Glass

Sarah was too unsettled to go back to work, but she’d mostly rearranged her afternoon anyway and a phone call settled the rest. Likewise, she couldn’t go home; the weight of emotion locked up in her chest would drive her up the walls of her tidy apartment in no time flat. So she went to Central Park instead, walking through the Ramble with long, purposeful strides, her head down but peripherally aware of her surroundings—it was still the city, you had to keep your wits about you, even when you were boiling over with frustration.

Alli had read a book called _The Labyrinth_. Sarah used to own a copy, though she couldn’t remember where she’d gotten it. Probably her mom, who was great at giving gifts (and not so great at being present for the celebrations themselves, but oh well). Around the age of fifteen, Sarah had _loved_ that story, had even memorized all the main character’s lines. She used to recite it in the park, wearing one of her mother’s costumes and a tiara, declaiming to Merlin or to a statue. Once to an owl that happened to land nearby, she recalled, but her mind flinched from that memory as if it stung.

The girl in the book had wished for goblins to take her little brother—or sister, it was always ‘the child’ in the book, Sarah pictured a boy because of Toby—away to some fantastical faerie realm, to be turned a goblin. Then the girl in the book had second thoughts and rescued her brother, defeating the terrible Goblin King in the process. A great story, one she’d wanted to deconstruct in college for one of her classes, but by then the book was gone. She had put it away sometime in her fifteenth year, and it had never resurfaced. All attempts to find another copy had been unsuccessful, and she’d given up.

Wasn’t that odd, though? She’d found the story mentioned on forums and blogs, but had never located an actual copy of the book. Amazon had never heard of it. At the time, Sarah had dismissed it as a small-press book, maybe even local. Now a dangerous part of her mind was thinking its absence from all the traditional avenues was somehow telling.

She’d given up on all that fantasy nonsense the summer after her first semester of college—the summer she’d spent with her mother. That was the summer she finally, really grew up, and stopped talking to imaginary friends in the mirror. There weren’t any fairy-tale happy endings, there was no magic in the world, people were real and often disappointing. But the rewards of a  _real_ life compensated for all that, the sheer joy of doing what she did best, knowing she made a difference in the lives she touched. Who needed imaginary worlds when you got to save people in this one?

Something rustled in the shrubbery beside her, startling her from her thoughts. Out of the corner of her eye Sarah glimpsed … no, it was a squirrel.  _Had_ to be a squirrel. They could run on their hind feet, right? And mange would account for the lack of fur. Just a mangy New York squirrel. Goblins weren’t real, and that was a squirrel chattering at her, not goblin laughter.

She didn’t run from  _anything_ , ever, but Sarah did walk a little faster. She wasn’t quite sure where she was, but could see a break in the trees ahead. All the Ramble’s paths eventually led out, after all. It wasn’t as if it was a  _maze_ … and that thought made her wince, too. Somewhere in her mind the wallpaper was peeling, the bar had jumped from its cleats, and the locks were rattling furiously as memories struggled to be free.

_No, it wasn’t real, and I’m not going to believe it was. If I do, I’ll go insane…_ Sarah thought, breaking into a jog as the laughter— _squirrels_ , just squirrels chattering, maybe a mockingbird or two—behind her grew louder. She rounded a corner and spied something shiny on the path before her, some child’s toy, one of those plastic high-bounce balls, and it most certainly  _wasn’t_ a clear crystal ball spinning on its own.

Almost to the break, and why the hell had she gone walking in the Ramble of all places? The woods here were too reminiscent of the forests of her fantasies, too green and wild. Didn’t she live in the realest city in the world, the heart of New York, and who the hell had planted Central Park in the middle of it all like some enchanted garden? What had possessed her to come  _here_ , of all places?

The chirp of her phone was a welcome distraction from her thoughts, which were running in a direction Sarah couldn’t let herself follow. She answered it half-breathless, not even looking at the caller ID, “Sarah Williams.”

“Ms. Williams,” Alli’s voice whispered. All her clients had her personal cell phone number, something else she’d been warned against that had served her well despite that advice. 

Here was what Sarah needed, an escape from incipient madness, a rock to stand on when she was floundering through the muck of confusion. Her duty to the kids she’d sworn to protect came before everything else. “Yes, Alli, it’s me. What can I do for you?”

“Be careful,” the girl warned, and that chattering not-laughter sounded behind her again. 

Sarah whirled in place, seeing nothing unusual, the phone pressed to her ear. “Why, Alli?”

The girl’s voice was very low. She must’ve been trying to hide the conversation from her parents. “When I made the wish … they came. The goblins.”

“Goblins aren’t real,” Sarah said, breaking one of her own cardinal rules. Sometimes clients used fantasy archetypes to tell her things they couldn’t voice in plain language, and she didn’t tell them their experiences were false without carefully considering the situation. It was her own racing mind that denied Alli’s words. She couldn’t bear to hear them, not with the bushes on either side of her rustling as some unseen creatures— _animals_ , this wasn’t a damn _story_ , it was only animals moving around, squirrels or birds or even _rats_ , something completely ordinary!

“I saw them,” Alli insisted. “All kinds, little ratty ones and squatty round ones and ones with funny helmets and ones with big noses. When I went to check on Lucy, they were in her room, hiding under the crib and behind the dresser. They popped out whenever I looked away and hid again when I turned, but I saw them in the mirror. I heard them laughing.”

Sarah’s throat had closed up, and she wasn’t seeing the pleasant wooded path before her. In her mind’s eye was her parents’ bedroom, where Toby’s crib was empty, and dark shapes darted around in the corners of her vision. And that laughter, it wasn’t birds or squirrels, it was nasty sniggering goblin laughter, and  _she was hearing it_ _**now** _ . “Alli…” she croaked, but couldn’t string words together to form a sentence.

“I saw them again when you left,” Alli said hurriedly. “They were following you. Be careful, Ms. Williams, I think they’re after _you_ next.” A background noise of a door opening, and Alli hung up the call, leaving Sarah standing frozen like a deer facing the headlights that spelled its death.

_No, I reject all of this crap, I’m not going to be scared witless by a teenage girl’s guilt-displacement fantasy. She just read the same book, that’s why she’s imagining goblins._ _ It’s  _ _**not** _ _ real!  _ Thinking that, she spun on her heel and bolted for the open area ahead, not running from the weird laughter in the undergrowth. Running  _ toward _ something, Sarah could do that, and she was running to sanity and duty. Not away from memories.

She came out on the lawn and skidded to a halt, utterly flummoxed by the sight before her. A castle, of course, after the forest came the castle, mounting high on stone bluffs, but the color was wrong. It shouldn’t be gray, it should be the warm tan of sandstone, taller than this too…

Sarah tried a shaky laugh. That was Belvedere Castle in front of her, the park’s major folly and nifty sightseeing spot. She’d seen it plenty of times before. So why was her mind insisting it should be tan, with spiked walls and higher towers?

The door of memory finally burst its hinges, and Sarah’s jaw dropped. In her mind, she saw a far different castle, one she’d gone to with staunch allies at her side.  _ Through dangers untold and hardships un-numbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the child you have stolen. For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great. _

Chills ran up and down her spine. It was real, it had always been real, she’d tried to pretend they were just dreams to protect her own sanity, but she could hear goblins whispering behind her. And all those owls over the years. It was the truth beneath the safe and comforting lies she’d told herself for fifteen years.

Sarah drew in a deep breath, and knew once again that she was the champion who’d beaten the Labyrinth. She turned to the forest, and they were out in plain sight now, goblins grinning evilly at her, daring her to scream or to deny them. Instead she lifted her chin and  _ glared _ . “You have no power over me,” Sarah proclaimed, and with yelps and squeaks of terror, the goblins vanished.

Now, then. She had only to deal with their child-thieving king.  _ God spare you, Jareth, because I damn sure won’t. _

 


	5. What's Said Is Said

Home again, and the anger burned deep down inside her while Sarah sat in her living room, drinking a glass of pinot grigio to settle her nerves and thinking over the situation. No, _brooding_ over it. The police couldn’t help her; that was a joke. Besides, they’d been hoping _she_ could give _them_ a lead. What could she say, that Lucy had been kidnapped by goblins? _That_ would go over well. Alli hadn’t hurt Lucy, that was all she could tell them, and she’d done what she could to absolve the girl’s guilt. Now she was left with this, the sour knowledge of where Lucy was and who had her.

Why hadn’t the smug bastard gone to Alli in a storm of glitter and thunder? Why hadn’t he offered _her_ thirteen hours to best him? Sarah could think of only one explanation: this wasn’t about Alli. It was about _her_. Because she’d beaten him once?

Or because he still thought of her?

A bitter laugh burst from her throat, loud in the quiet room. _Yeah, right._ Of course he still thought of her, the way she’d thought of him, moony-eyed and dreaming for years. _Of course_ , he did. Even as she thought of it, she hated herself. What did it matter? _What’s said is said_ , wasn’t it? She had made her decision, chosen her side.

(Never mind those dreams, she wasn’t going to think of them. Those dreams she had had no right to dream. Long after she’d stopped talking to her friends in the mirror, Sarah had dreamed of _him_. In her teenage years the dreams were mostly like that dance in the ballroom, with the exception that he kissed her—and that was usually when she woke up. Later, the dreams took place in his castle, mostly in his bedroom, and it didn’t stop with kissing. No, no, not with kissing. But she was _not_ going to remember that, not now.)

Besides, a dozen or even a hundred people had to have run the Labyrinth since her. Maybe a few had solved it. There was no way she’d ever been the only one; the skeletons in the oubliette attested to that quite well. The Goblin King had long since forgotten her as anything other than a particularly irritating opponent—if he was real at all. Her mind kept trying to convince her that it wasn’t, couldn’t be, true.

She’d even talked to her therapist (they all got counseling, it was part of the package) about this once, when she’d first begun convincing herself The Dream was just an ordinary dream. Tried to believe she’d never run those stony paths or faced down the Goblin King with just her wit and courage.

All the psych courses helped. Students were warned about self-analysis, but of course everyone did it. And it was too easy for Sarah to look at her dolls and toys, and decide she’d made up an entire world, allies and enemies and even set-dressing, to process her own transition from child to woman. She could’ve written a paper on the subtext of her grand adventure, but it would’ve been too revealing. And she couldn’t have brought herself to discuss it with the rest of the class.

Those explanations had kept her for years, despite the dreams she refused to remember, and _those_ were just her mind’s way of conjuring a fantasy lover, an archetype of everything she wanted and couldn’t, shouldn’t have. Now, though, even while part of her mind insisted she was having some kind of nervous breakdown from stress, Sarah was all too aware that she’d seen the goblins again. They were real, _he_ was real, and the glittery sonofabitch had stolen a child under her protection. That was all she needed to believe.

The real question was, how much would it hurt her to believe now? If just for a few moments, if that’s what it took to return Lucy home? Yeah, there were dozens of perfectly logical reasons for the abduction, but none that resounded so strongly. This wasn’t the first time she’d been involved in a case that went sideways, and yet, she couldn’t shake off this theory. Why _now_? Now that she was trying to make some sense in her life?

And what were her insecurities, fears of the past if she was honest with herself, against Lucy’s safety?

However unwillingly, Sarah felt her gaze drawn to the door of her room. And the floor-length mirror she knew was in the room beyond.

Even then, she knew what she needed to do. _Say your right words_ , she heard an echo of her younger self murmur in her ear. Sarah shuddered, closing her eyes. No, this was crazy, attempting to open this door wide again. Even a second was too long. Memories and dreams intermixed, prompting another shudder, Sarah fighting the melange of emotion it stirred up. Still, it might be for nothing. Even if he were more than a figment of her imagination, a call through the mirror didn’t guarantee a response. God, what was she considering here?

_Stop it, Sarah. It’s just childhood legends. Just go in there and do it. Nothing will happen and you’ll be able to get on with things. Get your mind geared toward what could have really happened to Lucy. Just get this idiocy over with._

It might be nonsense. There was a certain madness in even entertaining the thought, putting thought into motion, but if there was a chance…

With a deep breath, Sarah opened her eyes. Here inner thought was right. Feeling like a fool trying to conjure the King of the Goblins in your looking glass was nothing next to the uncertainty of what had happened to her charge. What was a moment of embarrassment alone in your apartment next to that? Raising her glass of wine, she took a deep draught before getting to her feet. Part of her wanted to wait, to consider actions further; the other was just ready for this attack of inanity to be over with. Whistling in the dark over childhood fantasies wasn’t going to solve anything. Another deep breath and she was stalking up the shadowy hallway toward her room, wineglass still in hand.

Now if she could only kill the moths of worry arising, shivering her skin, as she went.

Forcing herself past the thought, Sarah opened the room to her bedroom. Shadows had risen here, too, twilight having slipped in while she had been lost in thought. Never once in the last three years had she been hesitant to cross the threshold; the glint of dying light on the glass through the window managed that quite well. Growling at herself in disgust, Sarah made herself cross the room, not even considering turning on the light. She was being a coward enough with this tentativeness. Needing a light to be brave was for children. She was going to do this; she was going to do this and banish all of this once and for all.

As she approached the mirror, a trick of light and shadow turned its surface dark, so that she couldn’t see her own reflection at all. Sarah’s heart seemed to be pounding in her throat, but at the sight of that hollow blackness, it stopped, along with her breath. All of her instincts screamed at her to run. Another might have done so. At the core of her being, though, Sarah was made of determination. _For my will is as strong,_ she thought, steadying.

Another step and she saw herself in the mirror, a woman of almost-thirty, trembling with tension. (Not terror, absolutely not.) A flash of memory, all the times she’d spent as a teenager gazing at her own face and wishing she could see a princess instead of a pretty but otherwise unremarkable—at least in her own mind—girl. The years had sharpened her features from pretty to beautiful, made her green eyes more intense, and her hair was still as dark as ever. The first threads of silver hadn’t shown up yet, nor have the first lines at the corners of her eyes, but Sarah knew they were coming.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly. When she reopened them, the face staring back at her is focused, steady, serious, the furthest thing from a mental breakdown. Now all she had to do was say the right words, but what words are those?

“Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be, get over here and return the child you stole from me,” she muttered, and that was more whistling past the graveyard. The _real_ words had to start with ‘ _I wish’_ , and she was loathe to even think them.

It had to be done, though, even if nothing happened, that would be a result. If she said the words and no one answered, Sarah could go forward believing that she’d acquired a bit of Alli’s hysteria, and do everything in her power to help the police. If there _was_ an answer, though, it would all be up to her.

 _I wish the Goblin King would come here so we can settle this, once and for all._ Those were the right words, they chimed in her mind, and Sarah drew breath to speak them before she lost her nerve. “I…” she began, gripping the stem of the glass tightly.

Her phone chirped, and Sarah startled so violently that she ended up throwing her glass across the room. _Little bit high-strung, aren’t we? Damn,_ she thought to herself, stepping out of the bedroom to answer her phone. “Sarah Williams.”

“You sound like such a _Muggle_ when you answer with your own name,” Toby laughed in her ear, and her kid brother’s voice soothed her the way little else could. “How come you sound so freaked out?”

“It’s nothing,” Sarah lied.

He could hear that in her voice, just as she could hear his scowl. “ _Please_ tell me I didn’t interrupt a date with Barton Part Two. That’d be too gross.”

Sarah couldn’t help laughing. “No, you didn’t interrupt a date. I’m not even dating anyone right now. It’s just work stuff on my mind.”

His reply was immediate, and scathing as only a fifteen-year-old boy could be. “Good. Because seriously, even _Mom_ thought it was weird that you were dating Boring Bland Barton. How you could date anybody whose name was that close to _Barf_ ton, I’ll never know. A ton of barf is exactly what he is.”

“Shut it, Tobe. My love life, none of your business. Otherwise _I_ get all involved in _your_ love life, such as it is, and we don’t want that, now do we?”

“All right, all right, chill,” Toby said, and changed the topic. “Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten about Saturday.”

Grinning, she replied, “I haven’t forgotten Saturday, Toby. It comes after Friday and before Sunday. What’s to forget?”

“ _Sarah!_ Don’t be a jerk.”

“Don’t call me a jerk, jerk.” The playful name-calling went back at least ten years; Sarah was glad he’d eventually graduated to ‘jerk’ instead of ‘meanyhead’.

“Don’t _be_ a jerk, jerk-squared,” Toby shot back. “Anyway. Saturday, two o’clock, the gallery, and Reddi-Arts afterward, right?”

“Let me check my busy social calendar,” Sarah teased.

“Aw, come on! You said you weren’t dating anybody,” he complained.

“Life is more than dating, Toby,” Sarah laughed. “I’m just messing with you. Yes, I’ll meet you at the station around noon. Just _please_ don’t bankrupt me at Reddi-Arts, okay? Early birthday present or not, I still have bills to pay.”

“Yeah, yeah, you know I wouldn’t do that,” he told her, now thinking only about their planned get-together on the weekend. Somewhat to Karen’s dismay, Toby liked to spend as much time as possible hanging out with his big sister, for which Karen tended to blame his artistic leanings and his taste in music.

“All right, shoo. I’ve got work to do,” Sarah said affectionately. “Love you, Tobe.”

“Love you too, Sare.” With that they both ended the call, Sarah heartened by the intrusion of normality into her fearful imaginings. No world in which she and her little brother had pet nicknames (and pet insults) for each other could harbor the kind of dark magic she thought had stolen Lucy away.

It was time to go say the words before her mirror, banish the silly possibility once and for all, and get on with doing everything in her power to help figure out where Lucy was. Determined once again, Sarah strode back into her bedroom, facing her reflection squarely.

Chin up, Sarah declared almost off-handedly, “I wish the Goblin King _would_ come here so we can settle this, once and for all. If he’s got the guts to do it, that is.”

Not a ripple. Not shadow in the darkened room. No shapes of goblins scurrying in the background, no chittering laughter. The electricity didn’t fail. The world within the glass remained the same.

Sarah let out the small breath she had been holding. Just as she had suspected. All of this childhood fantasy had gone to her head. She had worked herself up for nothing. Smirking at her own defiance, she turned from the mirror, ready to walk back out and check her list of contacts for anyone who might be able to help the police investigation.

Behind her, she heard a voice she recognized instantly, despite not hearing it for years. “It has never been about _guts_ , precious one.”

_ No.  _ The hair stood up on the nape of Sarah’s neck, and she yelped out a curse. _ Shit! That wasn’t supposed to actually  _ _**work** _ _!  _ Everything in her froze at that, stealing her breath, eyes wide in disbelief. 

 


	6. No Love Injection

The reasonable, sensible part of Sarah’s mind, which had been working furiously to rationalize or even forget anything remotely magical, simply shut down in protest. The heart of everything she’d tried to deny was standing in her bedroom _right behind her_.

She had to do _something_ , she couldn’t just stand her as if she was petrified of him. And as always, when Sarah felt cornered and outmatched, bravado and sarcasm were the tools she used to keep her adversary from knowing that. “At least you didn’t show up in a glitter explosion this time,” she said, proud of how level and sardonic her voice sounded. “Do you even know what a pain that stuff is to get out of the carpets?”

Saying that, she turned around, and caught her breath all over again. The mere fact of the man, standing less than five feet away, rocked her to the core. There he was, Jareth, the Goblin King, utterly unchanged by fifteen years, regarding her steadily from mismatched eyes. All the allure, all the danger, all the magic, all wrapped up in one man who’d haunted her dreams long after she’d convinced herself he was nothing more than that. And now he stood before her, irrefutably real. No amount of denial, no matter how cleverly backed by psychological theory, could dismiss him.

Sarah looked at him with the eyes of the woman she’d become, and that cynical adult self wondered how the hell he managed to radiate aggressive masculinity while wearing heeled boots and more makeup than _she_ ever bothered with. But somewhere inside, the girl she’d once been was remembering a lovely dress, a breathless dance, the feeling of being lost in his gaze.

She fought that feeling, choking it down savagely. He might be beautiful, almost magnetically attractive, but he was _also_ the one who’d stolen Toby and sent her through the Labyrinth to get him back. The one who’d thrown a snake in her face, sicced the Cleaners on her, and stolen her memories with an enchanted peach.

Wrath was her armor. “Give me the girl,” she demanded.

“Manners, Sarah,” he chided, and the way he said her name made certain dreams flicker in her consciousness. Sarah let that outrage her even further. How _dare_ he have the gall to be attractive, after all he’d done?

Even so, Jareth was taking a step toward her, smiling faintly. “I remember a girl who asked nicely if I would return the brother she so carelessly wished away. Whatever happened to your courtesy?” Her giddy teenage self had once found that voice so beguiling, rough and soft at the same time, like a velvet caress.

“It didn’t do any damn good, did it?” she shot back, acutely aware that she couldn’t back away without seeming like a coward. “Besides, I’m not the one who wished Lucy away. Don’t tell me you had nothing to do with Alli finding that particular book.”

“Many have found such a story. Few have said the words. Allison made her choice,” Jareth told her.

Sarah fired questions like punches. “Why didn’t you go to her, then? Why wait around until I called you up?”

“Allison fled from the goblins. She was too afraid to face the consequences of her actions, too afraid to face me and try to win back her sister. Did you not know, Sarah, that your courage and tenacity are surpassingly rare?”

Her nose wrinkled with disdain. “Not _that_ rare. I can probably round up half a dozen women who’d kick your ass, and that’s just the contacts list in my phone.”

“And how many of them could journey through the Underground without losing their sanity?” Jareth asked her. “But you did not summon me to discuss such hypothetical matters, did you, Sarah? Perhaps you wish to make a bargain?”

“No, I summoned you to _bring Lucy back,_ ” Sarah insisted, stepping toward him.

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Jareth replied.

Righteous wrath filled her then. “It could be, if you weren’t playing some kind of game here. You set Alli up so you could get to me. Why, God only knows; _you_ damn sure wouldn’t give a straight answer if I asked. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Alli and Lucy are both under my protection, you understand? You don’t get to turn Lucy into a goblin. Fine, then. We both know how this goes— _bring it on_.”

His gaze had turned cold somewhere in the midst of that, and Jareth drew himself up to glare down at her. The room darkened perceptibly, and his high-collared cloak flared in a breeze that shouldn’t have existed indoors. “You haven’t changed at all, Sarah. Very well, if you’re certain of your course…”

Even as he spoke, her bedroom faded out of view behind him. Chills raced over her skin, and Sarah suppressed a shudder at the landscape that was revealed instead. Oh yes, she knew those high walls, and the intricate stone maze beyond them. Far in the distance, a castle reared against the tawny sky.

“The thirteen hours Allison would have had are already gone,” Jareth informed her. “Since you request it, I will generously grant you the chance to challenge me in her stead.”

 _Not again,_ Sarah thought. She remembered running for _hours_ in just the first part of the Labyrinth, trying to find a way into the stone maze. The traps, the tricks, the betrayals. (The hallucinations.) Her mind rebelled at the thought.

“Look, you _know_ I’ll win,” she said, steeling herself against any show of weakness. “I did it before, when I was only fifteen. I’m a grown woman now, and I remember my lines. Just make this easy and give over the baby now, all right?”

“Are you so frightened of my labyrinth, then?” he asked, his voice gently curious. A glance behind Sarah revealed that they weren’t in her room anymore; without her even noticing, they’d been transported to the same low hill she’d arrived on the first time.

“I’ve beaten it before,” she pointed out.

The Goblin King smiled. “Ah, I see. Such a woman as you have become could never be frightened by bogs or goblins or pits of darkness. Why so desperate to avoid it, then?”

“I’m not desperate. I’m realistic. It’s a waste of both our time when we know how it will end.” Lifting her chin haughtily, she added, “Spare yourself the embarrassment of being beaten all over again. That’s _my_ generous offer to you.”

He laughed at that, and his eyes briefly shone like opals. All right, maybe she _was_ a little bit scared. Sarah could’ve handled any man, no matter how he threatened her, but Jareth wasn’t human, and he was only amused by her attempt to bluff him. More than that, his existence meant magic and monsters were _real_ , and she was among them again, without the adolescent acceptance of this kind of madness. Jareth stalked toward her, lithe as a panther. “I see you still do not consider my actions generous. Do you think so little of the gifts I’ve given you?”

That stung her. Sarah still had a temper, and it spoke before she could rein it in. “Oh, of course. Kidnapping my baby brother? An adventure that almost killed me half a dozen times? And of course, let’s not forget the magical roofie peach.” Her cheeks flushed at that memory, but she brazened on, giving him a sarcastic curtsy. “You’re right, _your majesty_ , you are a most generous host.”

“Foolish girl,” Jareth sighed, shaking his head. He raised his hand, showing her one of those damned crystal balls, conjured seemingly from thin air. “Look, Sarah. Look at what I _truly_ gave you, and tell me the gift was not magnanimous.”

Against her better judgment, she looked. Its depths clouded, forming a house Sarah knew well. She saw herself, shouting silently at her stepmother and father, storming up the stairs. That was the night it all happened, and she didn’t need to hear herself to realize what an utterly selfish, melodramatic little brat she’d been. Her blush became a burn; Sarah knew now that almost all teenagers were self-absorbed jerks once in a while, but she’d been a real pain in the ass back then. It was a wonder her parents hadn’t wished _her_ away to the goblin kingdom.

Jareth’s gloved fingers deftly turned the crystal, and the scene dissolved. She saw herself snatching away Hoggle’s jewels, saw the sudden realization in her eyes when someone _else_ yelled at _her_ that it wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fair, but that’s the way it was.

The crystal ball kept turning, and Sarah saw herself freeing Ludo, rescuing her friends, fighting the goblins. She saw herself using her wits, being outsmarted, and yet every time Jareth tried to discourage and dishearten her, she only fought harder. She saw herself smash the chair into the crystal wall of the ballroom as she freed herself. She saw herself casting aside her toys and childish preoccupations as the memory of her quest returned. She saw herself confronting Jareth at the end, and the way he turned into an owl and flew away, the palace disappearing as his power was broken.

And she saw herself after it was all over, giving her bear to Toby, stroking his head tenderly. She’d watched herself in peril without being stirred, these memories that she’d told herself for so long were dreams, but _that_ scene made her catch her breath.

Jareth spoke, his breath stirring her hair—while she’d gazed into the crystal, he had glided around to stand beside her. “Do you understand, Sarah?” that velvet voice murmured, entirely too close. The fine hairs on the nape of her neck stood to immediate attention, her skin tingling at the thought of his mouth so close.

All right, she was a little bit frightened, but also maybe a little bit turned on. Crushes from the formative years still carried a lot of weight, even when one knew better. And the man was so damn graceful, so completely assured of himself. The riding breeches didn’t hurt, either. But she damn sure wasn’t going to let _him_ know any of that. “It was a great adventure,” she admitted.

“ _Adventure?_ ” he snarled, and suddenly he was in front of her, eyes blazing. “You are still just as _blind_ as that pathetic little girl who whined so often that the world was unfair!”

Once upon a time, she would have cowered from Jareth’s wrath. Even the girl who had stood up to him at the end had been afraid. Now, all she felt was anger to match his. “Who are you calling _pathetic_? You kidnap children and turn them into goblins! And you’re arrogant enough to call yourself their king!”

“Kidnap? You wished for the child to be taken, so I took him.” His voice went low and deadly serious, little flecks of iridescence in his eyes. It should have been beautiful, but like everything else about him, it carried overtones of menace.

Now he stalked around her, hands behind his back, and Sarah turned to keep him in sight. “The girl in whose place you’ve come wished the same. Jealous, thoughtless, vain little girls, both of you. And arrogant? _You_ were the ones who wished for the goblins to come and take away your horrid, unwanted siblings. Yet when my vassals obliged you, you have the audacity to blame _me_ for your own selfish desire. All I did, all I _ever_ did, was grant your wish. And yet you call me the villain.”

“Teenage girls are overly dramatic little bundles of nerves and hormones,” Sarah spat back. “Anyone with any sense would know they don’t _mean_ for their brothers to be turned into goblins! It’s just a _story_.”

“Just a story? Shows what you know about stories,” Jareth scoffed. “Truth, justice, love: all stories you tell yourselves to make sense of the world around you. To stop yourselves from crying that the world is not fair, when all you really mean by ‘fair’ is that you should get everything you wish for. And then when someone does grant your wishes, you complain that you never meant them.”

There was, perhaps, a grain of truth to that, and Sarah hesitated. The one thing she’d never asked herself back then was _why_ Jareth had done it all. At the time, she’d wanted to be the heroine of her own story, and that required a villain. Complex motivations were not her strong suit at the age of fifteen. Though even that young, she’d been smart enough to doubt a man who threatened her and professed to love her in the same breath.

As she paused, he turned away with an elegant sweep of his cloak. “Very well. If you know nothing more than you did then, we will play the game as we did before. You know the rules, Sarah. Thirteen hours to make your way through the labyrinth and rescue the child. If you fail, she becomes mine. And this time, I shall not be generous.”

A pause, and the Goblin King smirked. “At least, not so generous as before. I can afford a single gesture for _noblesse oblige_. You are most unsuitably attired, Sarah.”

Glancing down at herself, she couldn’t argue. A business suit and pumps were not exactly a good Labyrinth-traversing outfit. “Give me ten minutes back home and I’ll be ready to go,” she challenged. “Hell, you don’t even need to stop the clock.”

He laughed at her. “If only travel between worlds was so simple as that. No, Sarah, but I will not stand accused of _unfairness_ again. Allow me.” He gestured toward her, and her skin tingled and prickled with magic. Sarah jumped back, too late, and her suit was gone, the shoes too. Instead…

“You snarky sonofa…” she muttered. Jeans were a sensible choice, of course, but the poofy shirt and vest were exactly the same as what she’d been wearing the _first_ time she came here to challenge him.

Well, not quite exactly the same. Sarah had filled out in the right places, and her high-school clothes fit too tight in the bust and hip these days. Somehow Jareth had transmogrified her clothes into something that fit the way that outfit used to, right down to the comfortably-broken-in shoes.

He’d even including a bra in the right size, and that realization made her blush first, then turn her embarrassment into sarcasm. “Wow, you must’ve been obsessed with me. Remembered every detail down to the embroidery on the vest, _and_ got my sizes right? Here I thought you would’ve forgotten me inside of a week. I’m touched.”

“I drew the clothes from your memory,” he said dismissively. “In regards to forgetfulness, _you_ appear to have forgotten the first page of the book, else you would not speak so cavalierly. Your thirteen hours are ticking, Sarah.” With that he faded away, leaving her standing before the doors to the labyrinth.

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, stomping toward them. What fresh chaos lay beyond?

 


	7. Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The first part of the Labyrinth was still the endless corridor around its border. Sarah felt her heart sink looking at it; she’d spent hours running here, the first time, until she’d collapsed in frustration. Someone had told her the way…

“The worm,” Sarah murmured, remembering. “He kept inviting me in to meet the missus. He told me there were openings everywhere. They were optical illusions, though, I couldn’t see one until I walked into it.”

By that logic, she hopefully wouldn’t have to go far before finding a way in. Sarah started out, peering intently at the bricks on each side, hoping to spy out an entry point. Every time she thought she might’ve found one, though, her questing hand met solid brick.

All right, it made sense not to put any openings near the gates. Sarah picked up her pace, jogging easily along the path. As before, there were fallen branches in her way, but this part of the Labyrinth seemed neglected. She kicked through piles of leaves, had to sidestep tangles of briers, and at one point even had to jump over a large puddle of oily-looking water. Frowning, Sarah tried more and more walls, hoping one would be a doorway.

She quickly learned caution. Slimy mold coated some of the bricks, and Sarah unwisely put her hand squarely into some of it. It felt like cold gelatin squirming between her fingers; she made a moue of disgust as she rubbed the icky stuff off against a cleaner section. Further on, she inadvertently put her hand in the path of some unusually large ants. Unlike the worm from her first visit, the insects didn’t talk, but they did bite, pinching her skin. She was only just able to shake them off before they drew blood. And again, a harmless-looking vine tried to twine itself around her wrist, losing most of its leaves as Sarah yanked her hand back.

“All right!” she yelled. “I get it, I’m not supposed to touch stuff, but how the hell am I gonna find a way in if I can’t see it or touch it?” She kicked at a loose stone, sending it skipping along the corridor for a ways. That relieved her temper enough for Sarah to continue on, testing possible openings with more care.

This part of the Labyrinth was repetitive, seemingly endless, and her search felt fruitless. The despair that threatened to overwhelm her reminded Sarah too much of her last serious relationship, perhaps because Toby had mentioned him. Strange how that phone call seemed like it had happened ages ago, when in reality it had been less than an hour, and her brother’s voice was still fresh in her mind.

Barton. She shouldn’t be thinking of Barton at a time like this, but now that Sarah’s mind had conjured him up, she couldn’t let go. Toby had never liked him, and even Karen had thought he was too ordinary for Sarah. A junior executive, he worked for a bank, wore suits on weekdays and khakis on weekends, and generally dealt with numbers more than people. In almost five years together, Sarah had never heard him express a radical opinion or a deep passion. He was moderate in all things, and she’d never seen him lost to an extreme of anger or sorrow or even drunkenness. Barton was _safe_. 

Sarah herself was the most unusual thing about Barton. They had met at Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas, her coming home from visiting old friends in L.A., him coming back from company training in San Francisco. It was summer, and a tropical storm had brought in enough rain and wind to cancel flights, including the one she and Barton should’ve been on. Sarah had gone to one of the airport restaurants, and with so many stranded travelers, tables were at a premium. She’d ended up sharing one with Barton, striking up a conversation with him.

That might’ve been the end of it, but when they finally got a flight home the next day, he’d been in the seat next to her. Conversation continued, and she decided she liked him. He was personable, interested in her work, also interested in  _her_ but not too pushy about it, and when he’d asked for her number as they landed, she’d given it to him. On their first date, she’d convinced him to try tres leches cake for dessert, and the puzzled yet pleased expression on his face at the first taste was one she saw often during their relationship. Sarah herself was a new experience for him, evidently, and whenever she surprised and delighted him, that little half-smile would curve his lips. He had liked her, then loved her, but she got the feeling he’d never really  _understood_ her. Some of which was probably her fault.

A difference in the Labyrinth corridor jolted Sarah out of her reverie, which she welcomed. Ahead the path was blocked by the trunk of a fallen tree. That wasn’t too much a surprise, and she supposed it had toppled into this area during a particularly savage storm. Sarah started to hop up onto the trunk, and paused just in time. She could see the tail of a snake, the same mottled brown as the log, and if it hadn’t twitched she might’ve stepped on it.

Her fifteen-year-old self had been scared of snakes, partly because a certain jackass of a king had startled a yelp from her by tossing one at her face. In defiance, she’d conquered that fear, even pet-sat a friend’s python for two weeks. So she wasn’t scared of the little brown snake that had evidently paused while crawling over the log—but this was the Labyrinth, and it might be venomous. Sarah broke off a branch of a skeletal bush nearby, and prodded lightly at the snake’s tail, hoping to give it the idea to move on.

The tail flicked away swiftly, and Sarah started to breathe a sigh of relief. But then the entire _log_ started moving, and she heard a grinding noise of something rubbing against brick. She saw the tail disappearing into a newly-revealed hole in the bottom of the wall again just as she realized the log was growing narrower as it slid away. A strangled scream rose up in Sarah’s throat, as twenty feet away a massive scaled head rose up higher than she stood, turning slowly to regard her.

 _Not a tree, not a tree, holy shit it’s a snake, it’s_ _ **all**_ _one big snake, a snake big enough to eat me in one bite,_ her mind babbled, as her legs took charge and fled. She tore back the way she’d come, but it seemed as though she heard the slithering and rustling of pursuit, and Sarah flung herself at a barely-glimpsed opening.

Within moments she was forced to halt, having left the outer corridor and made her way at last into the stone maze. Sarah was panting too hard to hear anything else, and forced herself to hold her breath for a few minutes. Nothing was chasing her, so she let herself lean over with hands braced on her knees and try to regain her breath for a few minutes. It would be a long time before she could consider sitting on a fallen log or stump.

“I see you’ve met the serpent,” Jareth said conversationally, from somewhere close by.

Sarah whirled to glare at him. The Goblin King was leaning up against a wall, arms crossed, twirling a trio of crystal balls in one gloved hand. She managed to confine her wrath to a few icy words. “I did. You should feed your pets more often, you know.”

He scoffed. “That thing is no pet of _mine_. It showed up here a few years after your last visit, and comes into the city on occasion. The goblins drive it back to the swamp with torches and nippers.”

“Why don’t _you_ chase it off?” she asked in faux sugary tones. “Too scared?”

She’d hoped that would provoke him, but he only shrugged. “It is only a beast. Too slow for a sporting hunt, too stupid for magic to work on its mind. If _I_ deal with it, I must kill it. And that, my dear Sarah, I prefer not to do, unless and until it is called for.” He favored her with a savage grin. “So far the serpent has only stolen chickens. If it kills one of my subjects, I’ll have its hide.”

“Yeah, and then you’d have a pair of snakeskin pants. Why does this not surprise me?” Sarah rolled her eyes, then cut him another glare. “And don’t try to sound protective. I’m not your _subject_ , your pontificating majesty, and I wouldn’t expect you to rescue me from that thing, or kill it if it caught me.”

His smile was as mocking as ever. “Have no fear, Sarah. If the serpent did try to make a meal of you, I trust you’d be more than equal to the task of vanquishing it. In fact, I might pity the poor beast enough to rescue _it_ from _you_.”

She tossed her hair and turned away. “At least you’re finally realizing just what the most dangerous thing in this Labyrinth is.”

“Oh, I knew that _years_ ago, Sarah.” His voice seemed to fade, and though she whirled to confront him, the Goblin King had disappeared.

“Disappearing jackass,” Sarah muttered under her breath, and headed onward.

 


	8. An Unfortunate Slight

As it turned out, a real labyrinth wasn’t populated by talking doors and invisible openings and friendly monsters. It was a maze, a huge maze full of pitfalls and traps. Sarah expected such treachery, and avoided them, but she found the whole thing … dull. She even remembered the walls sparkling faintly the first time, and now they were just rough stone, grubby with age and fuzzy with lichen.

She had no lipstick in her pocket, nothing with which to mark her path. Then again, remembering the tiles that had turned or flipped over, it might have been futile. No allies appeared to guide her, though Sarah called for them, hoping they would come as they’d promised. _‘Should you need us,’_ whispered in what she’d told herself was a dream, and she had stopped taking the words seriously long ago. Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus, Ambrosius, each name was a separate pang in her heart. Sarah felt responsible for their absence.

If all of this was real and always had been, where were they? The only familiar face was Jareth’s, and Sarah wasn’t exactly delighted to deal with _him_ again. Even Hoggle’s grumpy demeanor would’ve been more welcome than the king’s threats and arrogance. 

(Never mind that she’d stopped speaking to her friends in the mirror long ago, when it struck her how babyish it was to have imaginary friends. Never mind the memory of Sir Didymus’ perplexed expression when she’d said that aloud, or how he’d looked wounded before his image faded. And never mind that Jareth had visited her dreams for years after that.)

Sarah caught herself thinking fleetingly of those dreams, and her lip curled up in an angry sneer. Dammit, it was perfectly natural and normal! She’d been young and curious, he had been handsome and intriguing. No wonder her subconscious mind would cast Jareth as her dream-lover, despite how he’d treated her during her run through the Labyrinth. It was his final plea to her— _fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave—_ that had caught her adolescent imagination.

Her foolish dreams had nothing to do with her current predicament.  _Nothing._

Even if those dreams had cost her so much…

 

…

 

Barton’s house, a year ago. He’d invited her over, once again reminding her that she should consider his home her own, that she was welcome any time, that she didn’t  _have_ to call. Implying that he shouldn’t have to invite her. Sarah had subtly resisted that. She wanted her own place, her own  _space_ , she treasured her privacy. The ‘welcome any time’ thing was solidly, but not unkindly, non-mutual. He respected that, but she knew he wanted to be as welcome in her home as she was in his.

Except, as it turned out, he wanted more. After dinner, they had cuddled up on the couch together, soft music playing on his stereo system. Sarah felt safe in his arms, half-drowsing between nuzzles and kisses. It had been bliss, a welcome respite from the ugliness she had to confront at work. Barton was a haven for her, a place where she could relax and just be the beautiful, quirky woman he adored. She didn’t have to be her complicated, stormy self, not always.

“Sarah,” he’d murmured, and something in his tone made her look up, worried. She hadn’t wanted him to disturb the peaceful mood, so she’d tried to stop his mouth with kisses. That usually worked, and it was no hardship, either. Barton was a good lover, considerate of her needs, and his delight at her beauty was unfeigned every time. When she felt like taking the lead, she left him in awe, and Sarah had been sure she could forestall whatever uncomfortable conversation he’d had in mind.

It hadn’t worked that time. Barton resisted her, for once, tipping her chin up and looking into her green eyes. “Sarah, I love you,” he said, and there was a strange sorrowful note in those words of love. What he said next shocked her, though it shouldn’t have. “Will you marry me?”

Sarah had only blinked at first. “Barton, I…” She couldn’t say ‘no’ flat-out, that would be too damned cold, but she couldn’t say ‘yes’ either. She finally managed to stammer out, “I just … It’s not you. I’m just not ready to be married, Barton.”

“But you’ll never be ready to marry _me_ ,” he’d replied. “Sarah, I love you, and I like to think you love me back. But there’s a part of you that’s always out of reach. It feels like the harder I try to get close to you, the faster you run away.”

She’d forced a laugh. “I’m not running from anything. Especially not from you.”

Barton had only smiled sadly and tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. “It’s been almost five years, Sarah, and we’re still dating. You aren’t ready to move in, you aren’t ready to get married, you aren’t ready for us to be anything more than what we are. We’re not _going_ anywhere.”

That little speech had chilled her, but Sarah had also bristled at his tone. “Well, what do you want from me?” She’d been demanding, feeling herself get ready to pick a fight rather than face the fact that he might have the truth of it.

“I want _you_ , Sarah,” Barton had insisted. “But you won’t let me have you. Not all of you, anyway. I never really know what you’re thinking, and even when you’re here, you’re not _all_ here.”

“Y’know, those are supposed to be the woman’s lines, talking about emotional unavailability,” Sarah had said desperately.

“Maybe for some guys, having a woman as beautiful as you on their arm and in their bed would be enough,” Barton had responded, at last showing some anger. “Not me. I want a wife, and someday a family. I don’t just want to be a convenience to you.”

“You’re not a convenience,” she’d protested.

“No, half the time I’m an _in_ convenience,” he’d shot back. “Hell, Sarah, you’re so distant sometimes, I used to think there was someone else.” 

That had stunned and shamed her into silence, that he could think it of her.

Barton had continued, “I finally had to face it, though. Cheating would be easier, there’d be another guy, I could try to prove I’m better for you. But it’s not that. You have some idea in your head of what you want, and I’m not that guy. I’m good enough for now, but if you ever met the man of your dreams, you’d leave me.  _That’s_ why you won’t marry me. You won’t settle for me, and I won’t settle for taking second place to someone who doesn’t exist.”

She’d gotten angry, too, defending herself against the truth she didn’t dare face. The night had ended in shouts, tears, and Sarah storming out of his house. Barton had mailed her a box with the few belongings she’d left behind, and she could see his point in just how little of herself she’d left at his place. It had been her ugliest breakup, all the worse for not being able to quite convince herself it wasn’t her fault. She had moved on by throwing herself into her work, and congratulating herself on being so competent and independent. She knew of far too many women who would choose to stay with any man rather than be alone.

Now that she was standing in the Labyrinth and had confronted its king twice, though, Sarah couldn’t keep running from her past.

 


	9. A Hazard to Myself

She had to cast her megrims aside and focus on the task at hand. Lucy was a bright, cheerful little girl, if a bit mischievous, and Sarah couldn’t bear to think of her turned into a goblin. Not while she had anything to say in the matter.

There was one sure way to the center of any labyrinth, a solution Sarah had learned as a side note in some mythology elective. Place one hand on the wall, and never remove it. You might go into every dead end, and turn a thousand times, but you had to reach the center eventually. Sarah tried that, despite remembering that the labyrinth had _changed_ all around her the last time. It seemed depressingly solid now, and perhaps the mundane method might work.

Within an hour, she knew it wasn’t going to. The Labyrinth was simply too big. Her feet were sore even in her good walking shoes, her stomach was grumbling over her missed lunch, her hand was scratched by the crumbling stone and the thorny weeds growing out of it, and she couldn’t help but notice the lack of restroom facilities. A real labyrinth turned out to be a real pain in the ass, much like the Goblin King himself.

Just as she thought that, she came to something familiar: a pair of doors. The ornately-wrought shields on them didn’t speak, didn’t even have faces. They were just heavy cast bronze, imposing yet inert. She could’ve hoped for speech, for some kind of clue, but there was nothing, and that made Sarah scowl. The Labyrinth had never been about random chance before.

Things had changed, and she might as well accept that. She picked the right-hand door and gave it a shove, stepping back quickly. That single step was what saved her; the door opened on a yawning pit, and the stone she’d been standing on tilted forward to drop her into it. _Piece of cake,_ she thought with a smirk, congratulating herself for having avoided the drop-tile.

At least, until the one she’d moved to _also_ tipped forward. Despite her precaution, despite turning to bolt the instant she felt the tile move, Sarah still lost her balance and fell, sliding down the pit’s stone throat. Her reflexes were as sharp as ever, and she kicked out, bracing her feet against the opposite wall. Her hands flailed outward, seeking some kind of grip by which to drag herself out of this predicament. She managed, barely, to catch the edge of a tile with just her fingertips. It was enough to keep her from falling further, but not enough to pull herself up.

Suspended, Sarah could see the trap into which she’d almost fallen. No helping hands here—the walls of the pit were lined with sharpened stakes. The bottom was too far down to see, but she doubted she would’ve survived even if the spikes hadn’t been there.

 _He’s trying to kill me. The rat bastard is really trying to_ _ **kill**_ _me this time,_ she thought, amazed and horrified. The rational, normal part of her mind stepped in to insist this was a particularly vivid dream, and of course she couldn’t die in a dream. But the smell of stone dust just beneath her nose, the feel of grit under her palms, it was all too convincing. Sarah couldn’t pretend she wasn’t inches from dying.

She heard footsteps, boot heels on the tile, and knew exactly who was sauntering up even before she craned her head back to see him. The Goblin King again, resplendent in his finery, knelt down to regard her predicament. Sarah gritted her teeth and tried not to look ridiculous. She didn’t think she was succeeding: sprawled on her belly, clinging to a crack in the tile, both feet pressed hard against the walls of the pit, most of her body hanging above the deadly drop, and not enough leverage to kick and claw her way free.

“Well, then,” he said musingly. “It appears that the Labyrinth is somewhat more than a piece of cake, at least this time.”

“Fifteen years, I get that you had to redecorate,” she muttered. “Can’t say I love what you’ve done with the place, though.”

His expression turned quizzical. “I? No, Sarah. The Labyrinth responds to the mind of the runner.”

“Bullshit,” she said flatly.

“Come now. You’ve done your research, Sarah. You know what I am, and you know we do not lie.” Yes, well, she’d read up on mythology and folklore, even while grounding herself in solid realism. Those studies, those stories, came in handy for analyzing children, who often cloaked real dangers in fairytale terms. Or so she’d told herself.

She’d learned the fae might not lie, but they could shade the truth a hundred ways, and Sarah knew that inability to lie was not the same thing as honesty. She didn’t respond, only glaring at him, and after a moment he continued. “When you first came to my realm, you were still half a child. And like many adolescents, you could not conceive of your own mortality. A pit trap like this one was lined with hands that broke your fall and lowered you gently into the oubliette. Now, though, you are older and wiser, more aware of the cruelties of the world. You have faced the fact that the world began before you were born, and it will not end when you draw your last breath. Now, the stakes are higher, and any mistake could be lethal.”

“Duly noted,” Sarah said. “Are you going to stand there and preach at me about it, or get out of my way?”

“Actually, I had it in mind to assist you,” Jareth said.

Sarah blinked in utter surprise. “Why would you _help_ me?” she blurted out.

For a fraction of a second, his expression seemed hurt. But then the vain and prideful king was smirking at her again. “Oh, I do not mean to offer you such a boon for _free_ , precious one. If I help you, it will cost you an hour.”

“Hell no,” she spat.

“As you will, then,” Jareth replied, and made no indication of getting up or leaving.

So he meant to stick around and watch her inevitably-humiliating attempts to extricate herself from this particular screwup. Great. At that precise moment, Sarah felt the soles of her shoes slip a little against the wall, and scrabbled for a better hold on the tile.

Jareth’s hand closed over her wrist, and it was just enough stability for her to get her feet set against the wall of the pit again. He let go as soon as she did, and spoke in conversational tones. “It is a generous offer, Sarah. You cannot hold on forever, and I will only take away an hour.”

“Ten minutes,” she replied.

That startled a laugh out of him. “Do you think this is negotiable?”

“Twenty,” Sarah offered. Her fingers were going numb, and her leg muscles were starting to tremble.

“I admire your spirit. Forty-five minutes.”

“Half an hour— _shit!_ ” That was it, her feet slipped, and Sarah threw herself forward in a desperate clawing scrabble for purchase. Her fingernails scraped the stone, bending painfully back, but it wasn’t enough to hold her up, and she could _feel_ those spikes ready to plunge into her legs.

Jareth grabbed her, yanking her up and toward him. Instinctively, she clutched his arms, falling back against his chest as he tugged her closer. They both ended up sitting down just out of the trap’s range, with Sarah practically in his lap. Adrenaline coursed through her, and Sarah found herself panting to catch her breath. That had been _way_ too damn close.

And so was this, she realized, as Jareth’s arms tightened around her. He smelled like leather and sandalwood and spices, a scent she could bury her nose in and breathe contentment. His strong, lean body cradled hers as if they’d been made for each other. She was relaxing into him without even thinking about it, as if by instinct.

 _That’s his magic at work,_ she told herself, but before she could shrug out of his embrace, he moved. One arm was still around her waist, but he pressed his other hand over the center of her chest, just at the neckline of the blouse. “Your heart is racing,” Jareth observed. His voice was a whisper against her neck, his gloved touch was warm supple leather through light fabric and on delicate skin.

The effect he had on her was as predictable as it was dangerous. Sarah started to tip her head back, offering him her throat, and her body was already going loose and languid against him. The dreams she’d denied for so many years flashed through her mind: wrapped up in him, his lips on her neck, his voice husky, his body warm and strong, his hands moving over her possessively.

She caught herself in time, jerking away from him with wide eyes. Her legs were still a bit too wobbly from the near-death scare to hold her, but Sarah could scramble out of his _lap_ , at least. “Forget it, I’m not that easily fooled anymore,” she said, harshly enough that even she wondered who she was trying to convince.

His eyes were stormy, flecked with opalescence, but he schooled his features to stillness. “Of course not. Now, my last offer was forty-five minutes…” A clock faded into existence behind him, and the hands began to spin.

“ _My_ last offer was thirty,” Sarah interjected, and crossed her arms.

It was worth it to see the Goblin King taken aback. “Nevertheless, I did not agree to it. I rescued you because there’s no point negotiating with a corpse. You could not have held on any longer, so _my_ final offer should stand.”

He had an irritating point, but Sarah wasn’t known for backing down, Aboveground or Below. “Fine, forty-five … minus fifteen for getting handsy, Your Perviness. I did _not_ agree to being snuggled and groped.”

Jareth actually rolled his eyes at her, an expression she was much more used to seeing on Toby’s face. “Sarah, Sarah. As if you hadn’t dreamed of such, and more.”

“You _wish_ ,” she spat.

His smile was dangerous. “Ask not what _I_ have wished, precious one. However, I can afford to grant you the time, seeing as how you’ve barely begun the Labyrinth. Half an hour, as you insist.” The clock’s hands spun, and he rose gracefully, offering a hand to help her up.

Sarah refused to accept it, getting to her feet on her own. “Just out of curiosity, how the hell was I supposed to solve that puzzle?”

He gave her an arch look, then gestured toward the doors. Both of them opened, revealing identical traps. “If I were to hazard a guess, this appears to show that all choices are flawed and futile,” Jareth mused. “Or perhaps that shortcuts are often the opposite. Ask yourself these questions, Sarah. It is _your_ mind informing the Labyrinth now.”

That sounded too plausible, and Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. “What about my friends? If the Labyrinth was running to _my_ expectations, why aren’t they here?”

Jareth’s smile was crooked. “It answers to your  _belief_ , not your expectations. Do you truly, in your heart of hearts, believe that a cowardly dwarf, a gentle-hearted night troll, and a too-valiant fox-knight can help you now? Or, more to the point, do you believe there is  _anyone_ who would aid you? Is your life not a monument to your own independence?” 

That hit a little too close to home. Sarah had to break their locked gazes, covering it with a heavy sigh. “If I find out you did anything to hurt them, I’ll have your head on a spike. You know that, right?”

“You have an interesting way of answering questions, Sarah,” Jareth said. “Consider this. Just now, the Labyrinth is as dangerous to them as it is to you. Or to me. In any case, I give you my word, I have not harmed your friends. Not in the immediate aftermath of their treasonous betrayal, and not now.” 

She glared at him. “Betrayal? That’s rich. Who threatened Hoggle into giving me that damned peach?”

“Hoggle is my creature. My employee, in fact; he is the Royal Gardener. Sarah, you speak as if the peach was the worst harm anyone had ever done you,” Jareth observed. 

“It was a scummy damn trick,” she spat.

“It was _your_ dream,” he insisted.

“Bullshit.”

“You do keep saying that. Who, exactly, are you trying to convince?”

Her temper got the best of her, and Sarah stalked into his space, jabbing an accusatory finger at his chest. “If anything it was  _your_ dream. A bunch of lewd dancers fawning over you, and the ‘beautiful young girl’ chasing you around the place in a virgin-white ballgown? Only to practically fall into your arms like some empty-headed romance novel trope, and end up dancing with the guy who, one, is way too old for her, and two,  _kidnapped her brother!”_

Jareth only cocked his head and regarded her curiously. “You still believe this is about Toby?”

“Oh, fuck me, it can’t all be about me,” Sarah snapped, throwing up her hands and stalking away.

“It can, and I would be delighted,” Jareth replied easily.

Sarah came to a sudden halt and looked over her shoulder at him in utter disbelief. That lasted just long enough for her to wish for something to throw at him. Preferably a javelin, or a cannonball, or maybe a grenade. “That was a  _figure of speech_ ,” she said at last.

He gave a noncommittal shrug. “In any case, you know what I am, and how long-lived my kind are. Even should you live to celebrate your centennial, I would still be ‘too old for you’.”

“Point. Made.” Sarah ground her teeth in rising fury.

“Fortunately, I am not overly concerned with such nice distinctions,” Jareth continued blithely. “Nor are you, considering your history. I do believe every man you’ve loved has been older than yourself, if only by a year or two, have they not?”

She didn’t trust herself to answer. Jareth was obviously baiting her, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of losing her temper. Yes, she’d tended to go for slightly older men, if only because guys her age and younger usually didn’t have their act together enough for her to want to bother. As she’d said once to Karen, flustered over the biker five years her senior, she preferred  _men_ to  _boys_ .

Jareth smiled at her, predator’s teeth glinting white. “And there is also the matter of your dreams, in which you are utterly unconcerned with my age.”

“Liar,” Sarah spat out, the blood draining from her face. There was _no way_ he could know about those illicit fantasies… 

“Sarah, I cannot lie,” he reminded her.

“You’re ridiculous,” Sarah said, striving to keep her voice level. “You’re so hung up on yourself, your picture’s in the DSM under ‘Narcissist’. What makes you think I’d dream of you?”

“I don’t think. I _know_ ,” Jareth said conversationally. “Let me correct one of your misapprehensions. You’ve never seen my bedchamber, Sarah. I have never kept black silk sheets on my bed, save in your dreams. I most certainly would not do so if I were bedding _you_ , with hair so dark as yours. Royal blue, or deep green, perhaps.”

All the blood rushed back to her cheeks, burning crimson all the way to the tips of her ears. Sarah was torn between embarrassment and outrage. How  _dare_ he speak of her—not just her silly teenage dreams, but  _her_ —so casually! Color-coordinating the choice of bedding for better contrast with her hair…! As if he assumed she’d just swoon at his feet as soon as he mentioned it. 

The worst part was, some tiny fragment of her fifteen-year-old self pictured the way her hair would look fanned across dark green silk, how it would brighten her eyes, how it would highlight her fair skin—and his—and  _wanted_ to swoon. “I hate you,” Sarah hissed.

“You’ve said that in your dreams, too,” Jareth replied. “As I recall, it did not stop you. Which, I assure you, I would have appreciated very much, had they not been only dreams.”

That was the final straw. A loose brick caught her eye, and Sarah snatched it up, ready to chuck it straight at his gloating face. But Jareth had disappeared again, and she could only throw the brick at the spot where he’d been standing, swearing loudly and comprehensively.

 


	10. Long Live the King

Sarah’s wrath followed him like a cloud of angry bees, but Jareth ignored the sting of her words. She had been deaf to his entreaties once, he could close off her anger as well.

Or so he told himself. A link had been forged by her time in the Labyrinth—no, to be precise, a link had been forged when she broke his power and a crystal shattered on her outstretched fingertips. (Did she ever ask herself why she’d reached for it, at the end, after fighting against everything he offered her for so long? Jareth doubted that.)

Because of that link between them, he knew when she spoke of him, as now when she cursed his name with a depth and breadth of profanity he’d not suspected was in her vocabulary, and some of which was anatomically impossible.

The link was also the reason he’d been aware of her dreams. He could not let her forget about them, much as she seemed to want to suppress the memories. In Sarah’s dreams, _she_ came to _him_ , and the sooner she remembered that, the better. 

Returning to the castle, Jareth paused on the threshold of his throne room. The girl who’d been the catalyst for all of this was merrily playing with an assortment of goblins, and her laughter rang out in the cold, musty room as little else had over the years. Jareth paused a moment to watch her; the game seemed somewhere between tag and hide and seek, involving a lot of running around and jumping out at one another. The goblins were delighted, cavorting grotesquely for the child’s entertainment.

If he went in, he would only disrupt the game. Normally his subjects would be aware of his presence immediately, but they were too absorbed in their play to notice, and that disrespect would have to be punished if he made his presence known. So Jareth turned aside, stopping by the kitchens before heading down a winding stair.

He had to pass through three doors, all of them bound by locks both mundane and magical, before finally arriving in the dungeons. Most of the cells here were made of cold, hard stone, and bound by iron that few fae could touch. Even Jareth himself couldn’t touch the bars or locks for more than a moment, and that with gloved hands.

The goblins could, though, and he’d warded the entrances against them. It would be too easy for the three—well, four, depending on how one counted—prisoners to confuse his subjects into releasing them. And he had put too much preparation into this to let them out _now_.

One cell in particular, larger than the others, had iron bars across the walls, floor, and ceiling, which served to hold the stone in place. For the comfort of those held inside, the cell was clad again in wood, insulating them from the iron which was there to prevent both their escape, and any magic being worked on the stone. He’d never had to confine a night troll before this, and their rock-calling powers were not something he wished to have loose in a castle made of stone.

Had it been any other prisoners, he would have contented himself with straw on the floor for a bed, a bowl for gruel, and a bucket for necessities. For  _these_ , he’d equipped the cell as if it were guest quarters, with cots, basins for washing, a table and benches, even a privy. They had three meals a day, with proper plates and cutlery, and he had made certain they were unmolested by his guards.

The three were, predictably, ungrateful.

“I demand to be released!” the fox-knight shouted shrilly, as he had every single time Jareth came down here. “Sire, this captivity is _most_ dishonorable! As a knight of the realm, I should at least be afforded a chance at trial by combat!”

“Shut up!” the dwarf hissed. “You don’t want to make him mad!”

“Ludo sad,” the night troll mourned.

Only the dog was silent. Jareth suspected  _that_ one found captivity preferable to its master’s endless battles.

Sir Didymus shrilled, “I demand to know on what grounds I’ve been imprisoned!”

That was new, and Jareth answered it. “You are not imprisoned,” he replied, and that silenced them all, four pairs of quizzical eyes looking through the barred door at him. “Gentlemen, you are in  _protective custody_ .” That was a phrase he’d borrowed from Aboveground, learned watching over Sarah, and it was particularly useful in this situation.

The fox-knight was clearly as befuddled by that as the night troll. The dwarf, of course, scoffed. Hoggle could always be relied on to choose the most pessimistic outlook. “Yeah, right. Protected from  _ what _ ?”

“From the Labyrinth,” Jareth informed them. That earned him almost a full minute of contemplative silence. He needed them compliant, if this was to work.

“Sire, we  _ live _ in the Labyrinth,” Sir Didymus pleaded. “There is no need to protect us from our own home.”

“The runner challenging it today has a very literal mind,” Jareth said, strolling close to the bars. Not quite within Ludo’s reach, though. “The traps are quite banal, and quite fatal. I fear this runner’s belief in magic is almost extinguished.”

“How’d someone who doesn’t believe in magic even get here in the first place?” Hoggle asked. 

“I said,  _ almost _ extinguished,” Jareth corrected. Suddenly tiring of the charade, he continued almost casually, “Your ‘friend’ Sarah still believes in this place, despite trying to convince herself otherwise.”

All four of them perked up, three voices murmuring her name in tones of surprise and wonder—and one happy bark that probably amounted to the same.

The night troll spoke again, while the others were still awestruck. “Sarah … grown up?”

“Quite correct, brother,” the fox-knight said as it dawned on him as well. “Why, Sarah must be … no. It would be quite impossible.”

“Is this some kinda trick?” the dwarf demanded.

All of them were aware of the same cold truth that had kept Jareth awake through long nights, before he’d finally damned it all and moved that book into her young charge’s path. The world Aboveground had moved into an age where, barring a few eccentrics, adults no longer believed in magic. The fae realms had always taken children and adolescents by preference, young minds adapting more easily to the Underground, but in centuries past adult humans had believed in faeries.

No, it was stronger than belief. They had  _ known _ of faeries, enough to leave a dish of milk by the door for brownies and sprites, enough to fear the fairy-rings and beware of dark pools in the deep forest. Humans now dismissed it all as folklore, stories for children, and the fae on the whole welcomed that. There was too much iron and steel in the human realm, too much concrete and glass and plastic. Too few glens and moors left where one couldn’t hear traffic or smell smog. The Information Age had followed the Industrial Age, relentlessly crushing the belief in magic, and now Aboveground was no place for his kind.

They could still reach children, and adolescents, and a few young adults who hadn’t had the wonder bled out of them by banal ‘reality’. But anyone with more than a score of years was a risk. And a grown woman, Sarah’s age? Perhaps another king might try it, if he were as mercilessly goaded as Jareth. But no other king had Umardelin—the realm of the Labyrinth—to rule.

The Labyrinth was old magic, older even than most of the Fae. It was a test, a challenge, and it shaped  _ itself _ to each runner who dared it. Its magic did not always answer to the will of its king, as most realms did. And now, because he had arranged it so, the Labyrinth ordered itself according to Sarah Williams’ fragile belief.

“It is no trick,” Jareth said, quietly.

“Sire, we must go to her,” Sir Didymus pleaded. “Lady Sarah is in  _ grave _ danger.”

“Do you think I do not know that?” he snapped, and controlled his temper only by the thinnest margin. “You, too, would be in grave danger if I released you.”

“I am a knight of the realm, sire!” the fox-knight burst out. “Danger is my bailiwick!”

“And if you came within range of her, Sarah’s mind would turn you into a mere dog, a yapping terrier with less sense than your Ambrosius,” Jareth spat back. The little fox-knight was clearly taken aback by that, as by no other challenge in his history. “To say nothing of what she might do to Hoggle and Ludo, all unknowing. The world she lives in now has no place for any of you.”

“Release us, Sire,” Sir Didymus said, shaken but valiant as ever. “Even as a mute beast, I might afford her some protection. If the Labyrinth has turned deadly, she should have all her friends about her, no matter what it costs us.”

“Sarah friend,” the night troll said, as if that was all that needed saying. Perhaps, for Ludo, it was. Even Hoggle moved toward the door.

Jareth felt an unfamiliar twinge of compassion for them all. Envy threatened to sweep it aside; Sarah would have believed in their friendship, instantly and fearlessly, as she did not believe him. Ludo was a  _ troll _ , the dwarf had betrayed her, but if she could be made to see them as real once again, she would have hugged them and wept for joy.

“I cannot,” Jareth told them. “I have promised Sarah I would not allow you to be harmed. She has a decade of unbelief for the Labyrinth to sand away. Let it do its work, and let me see to her safety. I  _ am _ the king.” He, at least, had will and magic enough to fight his own realm’s attempts to cast him as the villain.

On that note, he slid their dinners through the small opening in the door, and left before they could think to ask him just  _ why _ he’d summoned Sarah back. That, he could not answer. Not to them.

Jareth could guess what Sarah thought was his motivation.  _ To win over the one who’d beaten him so soundly. _ Yes, there was that, and victory now would be sweet indeed. That she suspected the conquest would be sexual did not surprise him, nor was it entirely untrue. He would very much like to soften the stubborn line of her jaw and darken those steely green eyes with desire.

There were truths beyond truths, however, and the deeper truth to that lust was simply that he had been unable to forget her. The gods knew Jareth had tried—and had had help in the effort, particularly after she had shut him out of even her dreams. Yet every attempt to drive her from his own mind had failed spectacularly. From the moment Sarah shattered the enchanted ballroom and proceeded to lay waste to his kingdom, she had haunted him.

Now, at long last, there was a chance to exorcise her, one way or another. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered—for both of them—perhaps he might at last lay the ghosts of the past to rest. He had to play it carefully, though. For that reason, he kept magicking himself out of range before she could unleash that temper of hers on him and start a war between them that would end with all of Umardelin in ashes. If he could make her think, stop fighting him for a moment and actually  _ think _ about everything between them, perhaps there was a chance. 

_ If _ Sarah didn’t get herself or him killed in the process.

 


	11. I'll Be There For You

In her adult, professional life, Sarah rarely swore beyond cursing traffic and the occasional stubbed toe. She used profanity only occasionally, when she couldn’t fall back on better methods to relieve the tempestuous rages that had once led her to scream incoherently and wreck her room. Taking kickboxing classes had helped to drain the worst of her anger, and going to the gym to unleash her frustration on a heavy bag was both satisfying _and_ a great way to keep in shape.

Without that physical outlet, she was left blistering the air for several minutes in Jareth’s absence. She would have  _loved_ to show him a few of those kickboxing moves; her foot connecting with his chest, at full speed and force, might’ve taken that arrogant little grin off his face. And might’ve convinced him that her wanting him didn’t make him any less of an entitled, obnoxious jackass.

_He knew about her dreams._ She hated him for that, her mind was a buzzing red blank of outrage. Her foolish imaginings were supposed to be  _private_ . Her little surcease from loneliness, a better way of feeling warm and loved than going out to bars and letting herself be picked up by smooth-talking strangers. In Sarah’s dreams, Jareth truly did have feelings for her, and everything that happened between them came about because of that tenderness. The affection was first, before the passion.

It was a stupid fantasy, she had to admit, it always had been. A young lady’s naïve imaginings, all begun out of misplaced emotions and maybe a little guilt for the way things ended. She’d had so many mixed-up thoughts in the aftermath of their battle. Even as she had stood in her own living room, as he flew away, beaten, she could remember tears on her cheeks as she watched him go, brushed hastily away along with the broken ache she had felt in her chest. And then,  _Toby_ . She had pushed away all of it in the moment, yelling out for her baby half-brother, up the stairs and away from the last chimes of the thirteen hours.

It had not been her last dream of the Labyrinth; she had gone back through the link to her friends and the adventures had continued, yet not nearly as grand as they had been that once. She had never seen Jareth again after that, not even as an owl. And for her part, if she even suspected his presence, Sarah had always awakened herself. It started as fear; then a flutter in her stomach. Sarah couldn’t bear to see him and she knew it. Something was happening, something overwhelming. She always felt as she had in the final moments of their last confrontation.

The first dream had happened shortly after her sixteenth summer. The weather had been stormy and she’d been buzzing with fraught energy the whole day, blaming it on the lightning that had lit up the sky, gone night-dark with stormclouds. Fascination had her watching it from the safety of her bed most of that time, her mind racing. It had felt like a storm had been building inside her, too.

It had first happened that night, the dream coming to her so strongly. It had been a kiss, only a kiss, as they had danced in that ballroom. The words, his promises (mornings of gold, Valentine evenings), had twined into her mind, the feeling of loss that had pricked at her abating as she had let his lips meet hers. No, there was no place for her in the world of that dream, but she hadn’t been able to help wanting a place with him.

Sarah practically growled at herself, disgusted that she was even allowing these thoughts in her head. As if she had had any clue at ‘ _almost-seventeen’_ what he had truly  _meant_ by the two phrases. And now she did, more than she wanted to sometimes. There had been a  _reason_ she’d walled all of this off forever ago. It had never made sense anywhere but in that dream-state. He was a faerie king, surely he had his pick of mortals and fae. Why on earth would he love  _her_ ? The human daughter of a lawyer and a theater ‘star’? Why would he single her out? No matter what the damn book said. Want her, yes, he’d admitted that and Sarah had no trouble believing it. Men had paid attention to her from her mid-teens, creepy as that was, but it had never really occurred to her at the time. It had been harmless to her, never anything that had ever been acted on. She’d been too lost in her purple clouds and enchanted creatures back then to really notice too much. Secretly, she’d been thrilled to be thought older than she was, her development coming sooner than most of her friends. Nothing had been more amazing than someone older thinking her seventeen at fourteen. In reality, now, Sarah knew she had been lucky. No one had dared try to act on that oh-so-plausible adulthood. Other than Jareth, who seemed to see something more. 

Love and wanting were two different things, though, and what she yearned for, always had, secreted away in her deepest heart, was the former. And she’d die before the words crossed her tongue.

And the reason why was all too simple. Now the asshole who ran this kingdom thought because she had wanted him once, because she might’ve wanted him to love her years ago in stolen moments, that she would love him at his command and yield to his will like she was some kind of romance novel heroine, all breathless flutters. Fuck  _that_ . Too much time, too many experiences, had scattered those chances like ashes. If he thought to control her with that, the Goblin King would learn otherwise, and at his own peril, soon enough.

The fact that he kept vanishing on her just proved he was too much a coward to face her. Sarah took heart from that, and turning her back on the treacherous doors, she took stock of the situation. There was still a girl to save and a Labyrinth to run. Her own issues with the king could wait.

Meanwhile, the castle in the distance seemed just as far away as when she’d begun. Fairytale answers and sensible advice were equally useless here. Maybe she needed to think outside the box.

Or above it. A crafty smile lit her features. That stone was put together quite roughly, and her gym had put in a climbing wall last year. There looked to be enough hand and toeholds to make it to the top … and she needed to make back that half-hour she’d just lost. Grinning triumphantly, Sarah scrambled to the top.

Traversing the tops of the stone walls was a whole other adventure, requiring balance and obsessive care over her footing. But Sarah figured using that route would significantly shorten her trip through the stone maze, where she could _see_ everything. And stay above the traps. She was quite proud of herself, at least until she remembered she’d have to clamber down for the hedge maze. Even so, the aerial view from the stone section meant she would be able to plan her route in advance.

For a while, at least, Sarah didn’t have to bend every ounce of her concentration on the Labyrinth itself. Predictably, her traitorous mind drifted toward the arrogant, obnoxious, gloating, glittery bastard who ran the place. And those damned dreams. Sarah felt her cheeks flush again, thinking about it. _He knew._ Of course Jareth had taunted her with the knowledge. He couldn’t help being all smug about it, imagining those dreams were some kind of weakness he could exploit.

Little did he know.

She’d been _lonely_ , dammit. Like a lot of teenagers, Sarah had been lonely even in the midst of a crowd, feeling as though no one really understood her. The fact that she had memories of an impossible journey through a labyrinth only set her apart further.

And curious. Right at the cusp of eighteen years old, with a steady boyfriend, and all that heavy petting and pawing in the backseat of his car had been thrilling. It had made her pulse race, made her head feel light, the way that ballroom hallucination had. When the handsome king had taken her hand and stepped into the dance, the two of them and every other dancer in the room whirling together, caught up in the same measured pace, Sarah had been exalted. With Kevin’s breathless murmurs in her ear and his hands under her shirt, she’d felt the same anticipatory delight.

She’d hoped that finally going ‘all the way’ would be the culmination of that yearning. And like many a teenager with a boyfriend only a year or so older and not much more experienced, Sarah had been disappointed. Confused, at first, and when a second attempt was just as clumsy and unfulfilling, she’d felt cheated. Where was the rapture all the books and magazines talked about?  _Kevin_ acted like he’d had a religious experience, so why hadn’t she felt anything more than awkward?

Sarah looked back on her own naivete with chagrin. She shouldn’t have turned to her dreams for the satisfaction she wasn’t finding with Kevin, but how could she have known the damned voyeuristic Goblin King would ever  _know_ ?!

Realization struck her, and Sarah almost lost her footing. She should’ve known it wasn’t just a dream. Because the dreams had continued to linger for over a year. Because her emotions were all a jumble where the Goblin King was concerned, even as she was sleeping with someone. Because when she’d caught his coat and pulled him to her for a kiss, whispering, “You know what I want, give me what I want,” Jareth had  _known_ . The ballroom had vanished—replaced by the bedroom, and the black silk sheets that he’d made such a point of telling her were straight from  _her_ own mind—and Jareth had lain her down there and taken her with far more skill than Sarah herself should’ve been capable of imagining. She hadn’t had the experience, back then, to know exactly what would make her toes curl and her nails claw down his back.

Jareth had, though.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, shocked. It wasn’t just that he’d _known_ about her dreams. He’d been _in_ that one. Oh God, he had to have been. How could she not _realize_?

Sarah had to sit down, stunned and horrified. It was bad enough thinking that Jareth had seen her dreams; she could call him a voyeur, be embarrassed about it, and go forth in righteous outrage. If he’d actually  _participated_ in them, if half of what was said between them in the night was true, then were they really dreams at all? Oh God, what was said…

She couldn’t even hate him for it. There was no way to blame him or say he’d taken advantage of her. Sarah remembered too well that she’d been the one to push things beyond dancing and kisses. To be so blunt about what she had longed for. She’d even been of legal age at the time, for whatever that mattered in dreams.

In those dreams, she’d tru sted him absolutely, and blithely believed those lines in the beginning of the book. Never imagining that he was  _real_ , that he  _knew_ she dreamed of him, that on some level her dreams might be true… 

A snippet of song bubbled up from her memories: _Oh my blue blue caravan / The highway is my great wall / For my true love is a man / Who never existed at all…_

Sarah leapt to her feet as if stung, almost losing her balance and tumbling down the wall. “Nope, not remembering  _that_ right now. Not.  _Happening,_ ” she said briskly, slamming a mental door on everything in the past. Whatever else was between them, Jareth had stolen a child—which was a weird damn way to get a woman’s attention, come to think of it—and she had to make it to the castle to save the girl.

Nothing else mattered. And with her luck, Jareth might just be trying to psych her out so she’d lose.

She hoped.

 


	12. Sometimes, the Way Forward

Sarah picked up her pace to keep from thinking too much on such things. It worked, though by the time she reached the hedge maze, she was tired. That was nothing compared to the exhaustion of ten-hour days interspersed with dire emergencies. She’d faced that often enough in her normal life to have the endurance and determination to keep going. If only she’d had coffee … the break room at work always seemed to have half a pot of strong black coffee, no matter the hour, and it had often been a helpful boost.

Lack of coffee wasn’t going to stand in her way, though. Luckily, she found a couple of scraggly gaps in the hedges that allowed her to push through the leafy green walls and shorten her route. This part of the labyrinth had once been a neatly-groomed haven of shade, but the same decay she’d seen elsewhere had set into it as well.

She turned a corner to see a familiar chair, carved to resemble books. Once upon a time she’d met a wise old man sitting in that chair, who’d given her advice. Well, he’d tried, anyway. Now, all she saw was a statue of the same individual. “I wish I had someone to ask for help _this_ time,” she sighed.

The statue stirred, and Sarah was surprised to realize it was the same wise man. He’d been sitting so still she’d mistaken him for statuary, but now she saw that his eyebrows and mustache had grown even longer. “Who’s that?” his querulous voice asked.

“It’s me, Sarah,” she said, approaching, wary of some trick but overwhelmingly glad that at least _someone_ from her first trip still existed. “You gave me advice once before.”

With a start, Sarah realized that his hat wasn’t the same. Once it had been a living bird, and quite a sarcastic one at that. Now it was a taxidermy prop, yellow eyes fixed in a frozen stare. The effect was disturbing.

“Ah, Sarah. I remember you, young woman,” the wise man said, peering at her from beneath bushy brows.

“Can you help me?” she asked. “I need to get to the castle—again. And, well, I could use some advice for when I get there.” All the advice she could get, really. Jareth had left her feeling turned upside-down and inside-out, and she wasn’t sure quite how she was supposed to feel, much less what to do about it.

“Hm, yes. Well.” There was a long pause, and for a moment Sarah thought he’d fallen asleep, with the way his eyelids drooped. Then he looked at her again, intently. “Sometimes … sometimes the way forward, is also the way back.”

She tried to hide her disappointment, unsuccessfully. “Oh. Thank you, but … that’s what you told me the last time.” Although, now that she considered it, the statement _did_ apply to her current predicament. Her only way forward in finding Lucy was to go back to the Labyrinth—but she was already _here_ , and needed more guidance than a statement of fact.

He seemed miffed, leaning back in his seat for a moment. “All right, then. You should know, young lady, that quite often when it seems we aren’t getting anywhere…”

“We are,” she finished for him. “You told me that last time, too.” It made her squirm a bit to point it out, embarrassed on his behalf. Had it been Jareth, she would’ve scolded, but respect for her elders had been ingrained into her. And it wasn’t his fault if he couldn’t remember what he’d told her the last time.

“Hmpf. Perhaps you needed to hear it again, young woman,” the wise man said grumpily, and let his eyes drift shut again. He didn’t fail to hold out the collection box, however.

Sarah sighed and rolled her eyes with a faint smile. She went to pat her pockets, then realized that not only did she not have any money with her, there was no point in giving cash. The notion of goblins trying to spend U.S. dollars briefly amused her, but she needed something else to pay with.

The ring she’d worn long ago hadn’t been magicked back onto her finger, nor had the bracelet she’d given Hoggle. That left her with no jewelry—except her earrings. Sarah grinned wryly. Pearl drops, a gift from Barton, and she’d kept them because they were pretty and went with everything.

Trust Barton to get her something that could be described so blandly.

She took one off and held it over the collection box for a moment. “Excuse me,” Sarah said, and the wise man opened his eyes. She dropped the earring, then. “Thank you for the advice.”

“You are most welcome,” he replied, and looked about to doze off again.

“I have another earring. They’d be more valuable to you as a pair,” Sarah pointed out.

Those ancient eyes bored into hers. “Yes?”

“I’ll give you the other earring … if you’ll give me some advice I haven’t heard before.” She gave him her brightest smile, the one she usually reserved for uncooperative parents.

The wise man considered her offer for a long moment, eyelids drooping again. At last, animation came back into his gaze. “This is the Labyrinth, young woman. Where everything seems possible and nothing is what it seems.”

“Oh, that’s for sure,” Sarah chuckled. She gave him her most winsome smile, and dangled the earring over the collection box. “But I need _advice_ , sir. Won’t you help me? Please?”

Those bushy brows furrowed, and he harrumphed at her again. Apparently she’d reached the limit of his patience, and her attempts to charm or cajole him wouldn’t work any longer. His voice no longer trembled, possessed of a strength she hadn’t suspected. “Young woman, there is more at stake here than you and your earrings and your blindness!”

_Something else is going on, something more than just me and Lucy and this run,_ Sarah thought, and the realization startled her into dropping her earring. As soon as it clinked into the box, the wise man heaved himself off the chair, grumbling as he stalked past her. “Kings and curses and stolen children and women who cannot choose, what  _is_ this kingdom coming to? In my day we only had Thydus the Unworthy to worry about…”

Sarah watched him go, feeling guilty, and then caught on to one word of his rant. “What did you say about curses?” Sarah asked, trotting to catch up.

He waved his staff at her dismissively. “Be on your way, young lady. It is no concern of  _yours_ , I see that now.” And no matter what she said, pleaded, or obliquely threatened, Sarah couldn’t get another word out of him. He ignored her as if deaf and stumped along, smacking his staff into the ground angrily.

It did occur to her that just following him might help her. But after that staff came down awfully close to her toes, she hung back a few paces. And then, the old man turned a corner ahead of her, but when Sarah came to the same intersection he was simply gone.

She stood bemused for a moment, then scowled. There were tunnels under the Labyrinth. He might’ve gone down one of those, or Jareth might’ve magicked him away. In any case, her hope for a guide was dashed again.

_No concern of_ _**yours** _ _, I see that now._

And that, that comment there, made her very sure that she needed one. Not to mention, the echoed advice from years ago. From his angry reaction, it was clear that he was right: it must have borne repeating. The question was: why? Sarah felt a sinking in her stomach.

_There is more at stake here than you and your earrings and your blindness!_

Those words had power, strength, and a fair measure of frustration behind them. The wiseman should have known better than anyone the mysteries of the Labyrinth. There had to be  _something_ going on, for those phrases to be hurled at her. God, he’d been more churlish the more she asked, the more she tried to understand. As if she had been told this once, fifteen years ago, and still had not found the simple solution to his riddle. 

Something deep inside her shook at the thought, another something she didn’t want to put a name to. Something that pulled at her strongly. And that something whispered her name, whispered it hopefully. _We must not look at goblin men,_ her younger voice warned her, echoing the Rossetti poem she had learned in a mythology class in college.  _We must not eat their fruit. And the peach, I think it just might qualify. What is it the worm said? You can’t take anything for granted in this place._

Frowning, Sarah sat on one of the many benches that surrounded her, mind in a whirl.  _My God, what have I walked back into?_

And again, the voice of the wiseman rang through her mind. _Sometimes … sometimes the way forward, is also the way back._

_Kings and curses and stolen children and women who cannot choose…_

The question was, how far back and what truly, honestly, lay forward?

 


	13. A Pale Jewel, Opened and Closed

Of all the places in the Labyrinth, the hedge maze was the most familiar, the most haunted by memory. Sarah listened for the warnings she’d heard last time: the tromping feet of guards on their strange mounts, or the raucous jeering of armored goblins with little biting creatures bound to poles. She remembered how they’d tormented poor Ludo, at least until she’d freed him. Such an intimidating-looking beast, but he had a gentle soul. Ludo could’ve used his rock-calling powers back in the stone maze, making short work of it. And he’d been indispensable in the battle of the goblin city.

_If only Ludo was here,_ she thought, and ached for the lack of all her friends. She would’ve cheerfully listened to Hoggle complaining about every step of the journey, trying to break and run at each threat, if only to have him near. And Sir Didymus, he would’ve wrung some truth from the wise man and kept the wily king at bay. If the three of them had been around, she wouldn’t have needed Jareth to save her from the pitfall.

If they even remembered her … Sarah’s steps slowed at that thought. It had been a long time since she’d seen her allies. She’d stopped going on dream-adventures years ago, when it began to seem too childish. And yet, looking back, she wondered how she’d ever convinced herself that it wasn’t real.

After inviting the denizens of the Labyrinth into her room via the mirror once, and finding pieces of her socks stuffed behind outlet covers and other trinkets hidden in every nook and cranny for months afterward, Sarah had gone to them instead. Some regions of the Labyrinth were almost tame, at least if you weren’t running it to challenge the king, and she’d spent a lot of time in the hedge maze with Ludo and Sir Didymus. The fox-knight loved to play chess against the wise man, Sarah recalled, and Ludo would sometimes play against Sarah, or one of them, or simply lounge in the shade beneath one of the ornamental trees.

Those had been good times. They’d had to run from the guards on several occasions, true. And they’d gotten lost in the tunnels once when it turned out that Didymus was reading Hoggle’s map upside-down. But those adventures had lightened Sarah’s heart and given her pride in her own resourcefulness and courage, even when she’d thought they were just dreams.

Thinking back on it now, with an adult mind and walking these same paths, Sarah wondered that Jareth had allowed them their play unmolested. They had stayed away from the Goblin City, never venturing closer than the edges of the forest. Jareth had left them be, for the most part. There were times when they had felt his presence and fled, usually with Sarah laughing partly from the exhilaration of outpacing what might or might not be the King. But nothing beyond that. For the next two or three years following her grand adventure, she had been able to pass through the realms with only a thought and a glance in the mirror.

And now she found herself marveling at that. If it was real, why hadn’t he found a way to stop her? Or had that possibly have been something about the bond between she and her friends?

Just thinking about that made her sad.  _Should you need us_ , she heard Didymus again, his voice soft that first time. Only to have Hoggle chime in a moment later.  _Yeah, should you need us. For any reason at all._

She had, so much, so many times. As fantastic and unbelievable as it was, she still needed them. If only her stubbornly-rational mind would concede that they  _weren’t_ figments of an extremely fertile teenage imagination. All three had known her and believed in her so well. Never a falter from any of them, always at her side, except that Hoggle could always be counted upon to snark about something she’d done. But that was as it should be. 

She’d never had best friends like Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus, before or since. When had she finally stepped away from the looking glass and let them go? Shame crept over her face then. It had been her own fault that they stopped appearing to her. In the end of her childhood years, she had been more interested in being as grown-up as possible, in the midst of her first flush of freedom, than in the magical world in her mind.

Only now did Sarah truly understand what she’d lost. No, not lost—given up.  _Surrendered_ . And that was not a word that came lightly to a heart like hers. Every teenager grew up and left behind the fancies of childhood, but this was more than a story she told herself, and in turning away from her allies, Sarah had turned away from her own self, the imaginative and wonder-filled child she’d been.

Oh, but she had plenty of reasons to believe wonder was for children alone, and the real world held no magic. Sarah only had to remember the summer she’d spent with her mother for that. She gave a short, bitter laugh, then. It had been that summer, she believed, when she finally put her childish ambitions on hold and devoted herself to a sensible career and a life so firmly grounded in reality that only the Goblin King himself could slip into her mind … and even then, only because she’d convinced herself he wasn’t real.

She’d even given up on acting, despite wanting that and  _only_ that for so long it had been hard to imagine doing anything else. The world of film had left her disillusioned, though, its magics only temporary, and usually no more than glamour concealing a shoddy reality. Every smarmy grin and invitation to discuss casting  _privately_ , in someone’s hotel room, had chipped away just a little more of the wide-eyed dreamer she had been. 

And how that had hurt. Even now, thinking of it brought a fresh round of twisted pain and sorrow. It had been everything that she’d wanted, but nothing she’d expected it to be. Nothing at all. Her California adventure had made her defensive, determined not to be as naïve and open as she had been before. Something of the girl Sarah had been froze inside after that. Being taken advantage of was never happening again.

Suddenly, from nowhere in the expected, she caught herself whispering the lyrics he’d sung to her so long ago. “As the pain sweeps through, makes no sense for you. Every thrill is gone, wasn’t too much fun at all. But I’ll be there for you … as the world falls down…” As soon as she finished singing, Sarah had to laugh at herself. Whistling through the graveyard again.

But somehow, in those dreams, Jareth had been trying to keep his word to her in that ballroom. The dream had been the only thing to reach out to on some nights. Sometimes, the memory of him, the dream, was all that she had. She’d stopped believing in true love around the same time she’d stopped wanting to be an actress.

It had been her mother, of course. She’d always tried to believe that her mother left the family for love, that she’d been swept up in a grand romance, and even as a little girl she’d struggled to reconcile the abandonment against the idealized image every child wants to see as her mother.

It was hard to believe that, when the role of Leading Man in her mother’s romance changed every year or two. How true could love be, if it was so fickle?

She’d liked some of them. Jeremy, now, the one who’d been Linda’s costar when Sarah was fifteen. He’d talked to her like an adult, like a friend, and he’d never made her feel silly the way her mother sometimes did. Jeremy had danced with her, once, on her fifteenth birthday. Her gift from him had been a lovely new gown, and Linda’s gift had been the beautiful music box, and the pair of them had taken her out to dinner and a show. Sarah had felt so loved, so adored, she’d wished Jeremy was her real father.

The next year he’d been gone, and Linda wouldn’t speak his name. She never knew why, but the fact that he’d starred in another show with a younger, arguably prettier woman, was probably the answer. He’d been charming, but Sarah had learned the value of loyalty.

Robert was loyal, perhaps to a fault. He would never speak ill of Linda where their daughter could hear it. She drove him half-crazy, even by the time Sarah was fifteen she could see the exasperation in him at each new thoughtless act. And Linda could be thoughtless. When Sarah was eight and staying with her mother, she’d been left alone in a hotel room, when Linda’s “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, dear, I  _have_ to talk to this director, here’s the remote” became half an hour, then an hour, then two, and finally ten hours. She’d eaten the salad in the room’s mini-fridge, watched cartoons until the channel turned into infomercials, and at last called her father to ask if she could get a pizza sent to a hotel.

Robert had come himself and picked her up, tender with Sarah but so full of anger that she didn’t dare make a sound until they were home with Karen again. The next weekend, her mother had apologized to her and plied her with pretty gifts and spent the whole weekend with her, just her. Sarah could imagine what her father had said, when he finally got hold of Linda, but he’d never spoken of it to her. He would not poison her against her own mother, and now she loved him for that. It must have been so hard for him, to hold his tongue when Sarah was being a brat and Linda was being … well, Linda.

Sarah had done him the same favor, of sorts. That fateful summer after her first year of college, when she’d gone to Boston with Linda and her current boyfriend Bill, the plan had been for her to stay the season. Linda was trying company, sometimes, and Sarah—who had spent a year working and taking classes and auditioning for  _everything—_ found her flighty. But that wasn’t why she’d gone back home a month early.

Her father had given her three days to settle back down, then surprised her with his questions. “You learned to keep your temper on a short leash, Sarah, but I still know it’s there,” he said gently, with those wise, sad eyes she loved so well. “Tell me what happened.”

She didn’t, of course. Maybe he knew that, Sarah now reflected. Robert had tried to protect her so often from hurtful things, maybe he knew it when she did the same for him.

The truth Sarah didn’t tell her father was as simple and banal as this:

Her last night in Boston, both Linda and Bill had come back from the after-party drunk as lords, and Sarah had been in the living room of her mother’s apartment, trying to study. Linda had drifted off to the bathroom, singing, and Bill had sat down beside Sarah, displaying boozy curiosity in her work. She hadn’t thought it was anything more than that, beginning to explain the Baroque period to him, but then he’d tried to kiss her.

At first she was so stunned at his five o’clock shadow rasping her cheek that Sarah couldn’t move. Then she decided he was really _that_ drunk, or at least she was determined to pretend he was, and pushed him back with a forced laugh. “Had a few too many, Bill,” Sarah had told him, tossing her head in the direction of the hall, from which her mother’s voice had ceased to sing. “Mom’s in there.”

“I know,” he’d said, and tried to kiss her again. Sarah had leaned away from the liquor on his breath, not so much horrified as saddened by the tawdriness of it. Before she could slap him, her mother had walked back out, finding her lover and her daughter half-reclining on the couch, and Sarah shoving him back didn’t seem to register. Linda had started shrieking then.

Not at Bill. At Sarah.

She was stunned; this howling harpy wasn’t her mother, couldn’t be. No one could mistake what had just been happening. And yet Linda screamed on, blaming Sarah for trying to seduce him, and finally her father’s sensible nature had risen up in her heart and declared an end to this foolish misery. “I’m going out for coffee,” she’d told them both brusquely. “Go sleep it off, both of you.”

The next morning, Linda had laughed it off as a simple misunderstanding, but the joking tone was too brittle. It was too clear that her mother saw her as a rival now, and Bill’s sickly smile looked too much like a dog caught stealing food off the table. Sarah had booked her ticket home, claiming that Toby had called her, he needed her help with some summer project. Linda protested her leaving, of course, but the air in the apartment stank of relief.

None of that would reach her father’s ears, though. Sarah knew him to be a serious, sensible man, but she thought he just might drive up to Boston long enough to punch Bill in the jaw, at least once. And that was a scene she’d just as soon avoid. So instead she told him what had grated on her from her first night at her mother’s place. “She’s … Dad, you know I love Mom, but she’s such a _flake!_ ”

He’d patted her knee sadly, and had the grace not to agree immediately. “I wish I could deny that. You know, your mother was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and she just swept me away. We went to music festivals together, and Renaissance festivals, and I thought she was the most wonderful person on earth. The problem was, somewhere in college, we started to go in different directions.”

“You grew up. She didn’t.” Sarah said it flatly, but the words still hurt. It hurt to say them of her own mother, and it hurt to hear them and know that even if someone else had spoken them, she couldn’t have argued against them.

_And I used to want to be just like her,_ Sarah marveled, then and now.  _What does that say about me?_

“She can be exasperating, but she’s a good person, Sarah. And I still care about her. Besides, I could never hate your mother.” He leaned in and kissed her temple the way he had when she was small, and wanted to be tucked in at night. “Linda gave me you.”

It was, Sarah had realized, the kindest thing that he could say about the woman he’d once promised to love until death did them part. And knowing that, she’d forced the whole notion of true forever love to the back of her mind, visited in dreams but never awake. Her dating life had been pragmatic, looking for a reliable, complimentary partner. Someone who made her smile, also someone who would remember how she took her coffee. She’d thought Barton would be that, but the joke was on her, for he had still believed in the love of fairy tales.

As for breathless passion and devotion that bordered on dangerous, Sarah had confined all that to her dreams … where it had stayed, ‘til now. There was nothing pragmatic about Jareth the Goblin King in all his glittering glory, and he was more competition than compliment. The question was, did she dare believe that he could be relied upon for anything more than dreams?

 


	14. As the World Falls Down

Sarah had left the hedge maze while in the midst of her memories and reflections. After that came the forest, deep and dark and wild. The last time she’d been in the Labyrinth, the forest had led her right up to the gates of the goblin city—via the enormous trash heap piled outside them. This time, she kept to the edges of the forest, following half-familiar paths and checking her location every time she could get a clear sight-line on the castle in the distant. At least there weren’t any Fireys around to try taking off her head.

Unfortunately, the Bog of Eternal Stench _was_ still within the forest. Its rancid odor assaulted her nostrils long before she came anywhere near it, and Sarah found herself coughing and gagging. At fifteen, it had just been an awful stink, somewhere between raw sewage and rotten garbage. It still smelled like that, but now the horrible corruption of death arose from it as well. As if that weren’t enough, there were overtones of burning plastic that made her nauseous, her head pounding. The fumes might actually be toxic this time around, Sarah realized, and covered her mouth with her sleeve. That made breathing a bit easier, but she needed to get away from the noxious bog, and soon.

Up ahead, she saw a break in the gnarled and moss-covered trees. Sarah moved toward it, coming out on the top of a cliff. Below was the bog, its stench wafting up to her. She could see the forest rising toward the walls of the Goblin City on the other side of the ravine the bog ran through. Her way was across, and luckily for her, there was a bridge.

She wished for Sir Didymus again, even wished for the rickety bridge that had stood for a thousand years … until she put her feet on it, whereupon it collapsed under her, and only Ludo had saved her from a fate worse than stench. Because _this_ bridge was a single, clean sweep of stone, arcing high up over the bog, without any sort of handrails or even a curb. The edge just dropped straight off into space, and though right here it was as wide as the street she’d grown up on, it narrowed as it rose.

Sarah wasn’t afraid of heights. She just had a healthy respect for them. Rooftop parties didn’t bother her, but she wasn’t one of the daredevil idiots sitting on the very edge of the parapet, feet swinging over a many-storied drop. For the same reason, she had never gotten into bungee jumping or sky-diving or anything else that involved tempting gravity. And this bridge, with its conspicuous lack of any kind of failsafe, was exactly the sort of thing she avoided.

She heard the faintest rustling click, and turned to see a damned barn owl perched on one of the bridge’s stone piers. “I know that’s you,” Sarah said. “And even if it isn’t, you’ve got about thirty seconds before I chuck another rock at you, so beat it, birdbrain.”

The owl fluffed itself and hopped off the stone, only to land as Jareth. “Poor form, Sarah. Your insults usually have more originality.”

“Oh, go gloat somewhere else,” she snarled at him. Hell, she was almost blushing just _looking_ at the man, but Sarah would be damned if she’d outright ask any of the questions she was refusing to let plague her confused mind.

“Do not tell me that you survived all the hazards so far only to be defeated by a bridge,” Jareth said, glancing at it. “A pity you cannot fly.”

She attempted to stomp past him and glare at the bridge as if had personally offended her. Just sizing it up, not hesitating at all. “Well, we can’t all be you. For which anybody trying to buy eyeliner around here is probably pretty glad.”

“At least that one shows some effort,” Jareth remarked. “Although, I’m not sure why you think I should be offended. I do not subscribe to any of your human norms of behavior and appearance.”

“ _Tell_ me about it,” she scoffed, still staring at the bridge.

He laughed, that amused little chuckle that made her long to kick him square in the solar plexus. “Since you ask … if you’re trying to mock my taste in personal adornments, Sarah, I would have to say that I’ve never heard any complaints.”

“Good to know,” she muttered, refusing to look at him. _She’d_ certainly never minded a man in guy-liner, especially not Jareth.

“And if you were trying to challenge my conformance to your species’ laughably narrow and artificially-derived definition of masculinity, well…” The chuckle deepened, but she had the odd sense that for once it wasn’t just her that he found so funny. “You studied some history, did you not? Heeled shoes, wigs, and cosmetics were all men’s fashions long before women wore them. Your male contemporaries are far too restrictive in their tastes, too paranoid of seeming unmanly.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not every guy who can rock eyeshadow, gloves, boots, and riding breeches,” Sarah shot back, and immediately winced. She’d handed him an opening to brag about masculinity by mentioning the pants, and his ‘royal prerogative’ was _not_ something she needed to think about right then.

To her everlasting shock, he didn’t rise to the bait. “Of course not. They are all terrified that they might be mistaken for women. Which, for them, is the worst of all possible fates. Idiots, the lot of them.”

Sarah finally looked at him, curious despite herself. “I never said a percentage of them weren’t Cro-Magnon morons.”

His tone was dead serious. “And you, my fierce Sarah, could never be happy with a man who views the idea of being female with horror. You know you are not an inferior copy engendered from some man’s rib and made to serve him.”

“Not real good at the serving thing, as you’ve noticed,” she said flippantly. “And again. _Not_ your Sarah.”

He didn’t argue, for once. “Men fear you.”

Her head whipped around to glare at him. “ _What?_ ”

“You, as in women in general. But also you, specifically.” Jareth moved toward her, regarding her thoughtfully. “You already know that, do you not? Men fear what they don’t understand, and belittle it to make it seem less terrifying. And I regret to inform you, that even among my kind, women are often beyond our understanding. We, at least, know to treasure our women. Your kind could use a reminder that they once worshipped goddesses. But you, Sarah, men fear you because they realize you do not need them. You are no man’s servant or slave.”

Sarah’s mind echoed back on his last word. The earnest, desperate tone of his last joust.  _I ask for so little. Just let me rule you and you can have everything that you want. Just fear me. Love me. Do as I say, and I shall be your slave._

Now wasn’t the time to be haunted by past deeds. She felt adrift, knowing there had to be an angle in this somewhere, but she couldn’t figure out how it worked to his advantage. Also, she tended to think of faery kings are being fairly medieval, and the fact that he was stating progressive feminist ideas as self-evident fact had thrown her off. It didn’t help that she was uncomfortably reminded of Barton, who had complained more than once that he felt superfluous.

Sarah’s refuge lay in sarcasm, always. “Exactly. So quit with the ‘my Sarah’ bullshit, all right?”

He only smiled, leaning against the bridge pier and regarding her much too closely. “I seem to recall that you did not mind it so much, once upon a time.”

A flash of what she had told herself was dream roared to life in her mind. _A shudder, high and startled, her head thrown back into the pillows as her eyes rolled up. Her own voice, rough and needy, ‘Please, please now.’ He moved then, drawing a moan from low in her throat this time, and she felt him catch her hips. ‘ My Sarah’, was a purr with a trace of a growl against her loose hair, against her ear before he rolled her astride him. ‘My Sarah, my Sarah, my queen’._

She could have screamed with frustration at her mind’s sudden entirely-inappropriate recall;  why couldn’t she just hammer the lid on all of that now that she’d unlatched Pandora’s Box? _Segue to the damned dreams again. He_ _ **had**_ _to mention it, the bastard. I should’ve known._ “All right, _look_ ,” she said, rounding on him with an uneasy mix of anger and reluctant honesty. “What I said, and did, in dreams? It doesn’t count here and now, you got that? Even if you were watching like your own personal voyeuristic heaven, even if you were actually _there_ , it doesn’t mean I’m gonna fall down at your feet. _You took the child, Jareth._ And I don’t forgive you for that.”

“Have I given you the impression that I sought your forgiveness?” he asked silkily, but a storm of opalescence was brewing in those mismatched eyes, and it began to creep into his tone as he talked. “After your dreams haunted me for years? Not that they were not _most_ enchanting, Sarah, but I do, in fact, have a kingdom to run. It sometimes, nay, _often_ requires my full attention, which over the years has been distracted by _you_.”

Heart pounding as he got too close to the truth, she raised her chin defiantly. “Not in the last five.” And immediately hated herself for her quick temper and quicker tongue.

“Ah, yes. _That.”_ Instead of disappearing on her, Jareth leaned closer into her personal space. “You inspire treason among my subjects, lay waste to my city, wreck parts of my castle, break my own magic, and then have the audacity to call out to me in dreams, often at the most inopportune times, for _years_. And then, when at last we’d reached some sort of understanding, _you locked me out_.”

Sarah flinched at his tone, and hated herself for it. And, just like that, it was out there. There was relief and sadness and longing and self-righteous anger wrapped within those words finally,  _finally_ spoken. She had known it was going to come to this. He likely had, too. Be it dream or reality, it had been years of her life. Ones she had forced herself to willfully forget to go on, to become something more than those around her had expected. 

_Blue blue caravan/Won't you drive away all of these tears/For my true love is a man/  
That I haven't seen in years… _

Even now, with the lies between them shattered, Sarah could feel the coldness of that snowy night on her skin. It had been a casual first date with an attractive contact, Aaron, at a new little coffee house near the office that played live music some nights. He had tossed off the idea as he was leaving her office on a Friday night, in celebration of a successful partnership on a case he’d helped close successfully. Though she didn’t generally mix her work and her private life, she’d laughed and agreed when he’d stumbled over the words. Her acceptance had been her attempt to try to make her days more solid and grounded than her nights. Maybe getting out of her own head for a while would do her some good.

And it had been. There had been no real chemistry, for which she had been perversely relieved, but there had been laughter and good company. On a night like that, it was good to not be alone in her little apartment. Until the band that had been playing that night struck up for their second set. It had been pleasant background noise, the singer’s voice beautiful and soothing, and it still was even as the lyrics of this new song captured her attention and changed her life irrevocably.

 


	15. What if This Storm Ends

_Won't you drive away all of these tears/For my true love is a man/That I haven't seen in years/He said, "Go where you have to/For I belong to you until my dying day."/So like a fool, blue caravan/I believed him and I walked away…_

Sarah had stared at the singer as if enchanted, feeling goosebumps rising on her skin despite the warmth of the room. For an instant, she couldn’t breathe. The song struck her strongly, resonated. The ache in her heart had been so strong she hadn’t felt herself stumble to her feet, mumbling trembling apologies as she grabbed her purse.

That damned song, the one that had sent her running,  _running_ , out of the coffee house, chased by lyrics that were too close to the truth.  _For my true love is a man / Who never existed at all / Oh he was a beautiful fiction / I invented to keep out the cold / But now my blue, blue caravan / I can feel my heart growing old / Oh my blue, blue caravan / I can feel my heart growing cold…_

Suddenly afraid of those dreams, of being faced with the fact that she was more than half in love with someone who wasn’t real, that she had been for quite some time, and she’d doomed herself to loneliness in waking life, Sarah had felt as though the demons of her past were chasing her home. Maybe that was why all the old stories said that once a person was fae-touched, they’d never be free of them. Dreams like hers were addictive, too rich and sweet to let go … to perfect to allow comparison to anything  _real_ . Fantasy or fact, she was screwed—if Jareth had been real, he wouldn’t have been the man in her dreams. He couldn’t be. That was her own solitude’s creation. Once home, she’d curled up in bed, trembling and crying.

Only, at some point, she passed into sleep, and had no longer been alone. Strong arms cradled her, a gentle voice promised her she would  _never_ be alone, and she’d clung to the king of her dreams for comfort. And Jareth had held her, murmuring comforting words and sweet nothings against her hair, soothing her down. That dream hadn’t turned sexual, as most of them did, it had just been the peace of finally belonging, and Sarah remembered what she’d murmured against his side before falling asleep again within the dream. 

Three little words, spoken on the too-truthful edge of wakefulness and slumber.

_I love you._

And she had awaken the next morning, alone again in the loft apartment, but with the absolute certainty that these were not just dreams. And that very state of mind scared a little of the life out of her. She loved him, something she’d known for quite a long time without verbalizing, so much so that the thought brought tears to her eyes. It had become something that was essential to her life. Like the scent of him that lingered around her in the bedclothes. There had been a precipice and she had finally tumbled over it.

She was in love with the dream of a dream. And the mere thought broke something in her.

By then she’d had her degree and plenty of psychology credits. In the cold light of dawn, what she was doing—what she was letting her loneliness do—was borderline schizophrenic. She had  _believed_ in him, in the Goblin King, so much that her mind had created a hallucination so detailed and complete she couldn’t tell it from reality. The notion terrified her.

So she’d closed the door.

Visualization was a great tool for therapy, and Sarah had pictured all of those dreams, all of her foolish childhood yearnings, and locked them up behind a door in her mind. And slowly slid down it when she was done, curled into a ball against its base in her mind. Locked, barred, covered over, and even as she’d imagined it in place, the door had been thrumming with Jareth’s outraged assault on it. She could hear him calling out to her, entreating her. Pounding, pounding, the sound of magic in kind fighting what was happening. _S arah, don’t!_ _Don’t do this!_

It had scared her to see what she’d thought was her own mind’s rebellion, and she’d redoubled her efforts. It had left her drained and sobbing, grieving for a past that didn’t exist.

He had been right, in the end; he had not been a gift for an ordinary girl who had taken care of a screaming baby.  _Babies._ Again, the echo. The past informing their current situation in ways she’d never locked away.  _But if you turn it this way and look into it, it will show you your dreams._

God, how she’d cried that weekend. It hadn’t just been the loss of a love she had created for herself that brought the tears, the amount of broken objects scattered on the floor; it had been the severed feeling she felt within her. In closing him out, forcing the dreams away, she had lost the last vestiges of that girl that saw everything dashed with iridescent stardust. In losing Jareth, she’d had no way to hold on to that girl. There were only a few shimmering pieces, somewhere in her, that she could still feel. The last of the starlight. And she had to guard that, let no one touch it. It was all she had left.

Sarah had mourned her, grieved for him, deeply that weekend she could only remember in snatches. And on Monday morning, she had asked for a transfer to another location closer to the depths of the city. She had to start over again, where no one would see the difference in her. It was time to learn to be someone else. To grow up. Twenty-five was too old to blue-sky. The parallel haunted her, in remembrance.  _It was a dream. I dreamed it all, Lancelot. But it was so real! Let’s go see if Daddy’s back._

Suddenly, as startling as the voice had been back then, following those very words, she heard the junk-lady’s voice bray through her mind.  _Better to stay in here, dear. There’s nothing you want out there._

With a gasp that slammed her back into the present confrontation, Sarah’s mouth went dry as she realized that Jareth not only knew her dreams, he had been aware of that moment, too. He’d heard her say she loved him. He saw it in her eyes, and continued in a low, cold voice. “You really have forgotten the book, haven’t you?  _‘And he had given her certain powers.’_ What you did, Sarah, was  _magic_ .  _You_ barred me from your mind, despite the link between us. No human should have been able to do that, and yet you did, by virtue of your will alone.”

“Jareth, I had to,” she said, her voice half-choked and afraid. 

“You thought you did,” Jareth insisted, and his eyes lost their gleam. “No, Sarah, I will not ask your forgiveness, nor am I particularly inclined to extend you mine. What do you think nourishes these realms of magic, if not belief? And you convinced yourself that I was _not real_. Not only that, you barred me from proving otherwise. Have you not seen what your unbelief has done to this kingdom?”

Those lost memories rushing through her mind had her closing her eyes against the image of him. It had been the right thing to do, in those long, cold days when she had been drawn closer to him than ever before. It had been dangerous, more dangerous than ever, what she’d been doing. Her voice was soft, her poise rocked as she protested, “No, don’t lay that at my feet. Don’t try to act as if the Labyrinth appeared for the first time when I arrived, Jareth, or that it fell to pieces when I left. I’m not the only runner you’ve ever had. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t be who I was supposed to be, living my nights in my imagination. I had to grow up. I had to  _wake_ up. Jareth, I had no other choice.” And damn the prickling she felt behind her eyes.

The last dream came back to haunt her again.  _They had not spoken for some time, Sarah lying with her head in his lap, dozing as he wound his fingers through her hair, the tips of them brushing her brow, her cheek, as he reached the ends. A little smile had curved her lips before leaning into them. She’d let her eyes drift open. His strange gaze, blue and grey, looking down at her with an emotion she had never expected to see. So anxious she had been when he opened his mouth to speak, she pulled him down to stop his words with a hungry kiss._

Sarah’s breath left her then, that moment alive and tangible as if it had been only the night before.  _More than words could ever convey._ So much unspoken wrapped up in those touches, those caresses, the warmth of him, the feeling of having something no one else could dream of and never would.  _He is mine, I am…_

_It was just a damn_ _**dream** _ _, Sarah._ The sudden sensation of being crushed, smothered, overwhelmed her and she was horrified to realize she was going to sob if this didn’t end soon. And she wouldn’t. She  _wouldn’t_ weep before him.

“Not the only runner, no, but the only one to solve the Labyrinth _and_ defeat me,” he shot back. “And you’ve seen how the land has suffered in your absence. How it suffers now, as you try to deny its reality even as you run it.”

That opened her eyes. Even within her practicality, the pain of the accusation bit deep. Refusing to acknowledge the shine she knew was in her eyes, Sarah couldn’t make the heat in her gaze didn’t sear the way she wanted it to. “You’re going to make  _that_ about this, too? That’s not fair and you know it.” It stung, deeply, to be accused of the erosion of this land, one she’d been fascinated by even when it kept her from Toby. Something within, however, whispered that it was undeniable truth. It was as easy as remembering  _Peter Pan_ , remembering when Tinkerbell had been harmed. Remembering Peter’s admonition that every time a child said, ‘I do not believe in fairies’, a fairy falls down dead. Maybe it was the same with faerie magic. Belief was the thing; the unwillingness to turn your back on the impossible. 

Then, too, all of her experience within the realm of her career argued that erasing childish dreams was the only way to exist in the adult world. At least, the only way that held any hope of a satisfactory future. That was how it was done. It was life. Some things had to end for others to begin.

Not that she’d succeeded so well in erasing the past, or she wouldn’t be so torn now. Too easily she remembered the wise man’s words.  _Kings and curses and stolen children and women who cannot choose_ … Too true, that description. There was something more there, she knew it, something she was sure would overwhelm her if she looked too closely. 

In the end, Sarah found herself at a cross-roads, unable to choose to take a side. More that that; finding herself suddenly  _loathe_ to choose. So, she didn’t. All she could do was lob another cannonball, hoping to push all of this away for now. It would be a mistake; she knew that, knew even as she opened her mouth, but it had to stop before she lost control of her emotions. Sarah didn’t know how much more of this she could take with her defenses this low. “Dammit, Jareth, face reality for a moment. We both know I live in the  _real world_ . Even if I had a clue, even if they were more than dreams, we’d be lying if we didn’t say that it was only a matter of time…”

“You utterly obstreperous mule-headed _fool_ ,” he hissed at her. Sarah braced herself for another round of invective, and for the possibility of more unwelcome revelations. The wild, careening images floating free in her mind, memory and dream, forced her silent. In light of them, he had earned his say.

Then, strangely, Jareth seemed to restrain himself by some thin margin. “As much as I enjoy a good contest, Sarah, I will not stand accused of squandering your thirteen hours with mere quarreling. In any case, arguing with you achieves nothing except to make old wounds bleed afresh. Go, then, scale yon bridge and make your way to my castle. Perhaps by the time you reach it, you will see things more clearly.” He turned, clearly planning to leave her to her own devices once again.

_What the hell do you want from me?!_ The furious question was on the tip of her tongue, but Sarah bit it back ruthlessly. She was much too afraid of what the answer might be. Not to mention her own possible response to said answer.

Instead, she snapped, “ _Wait_ . I want to see the girl.  _Lucy_ . I want to know she’s all right.”

The look he gave her was full of complicated things. “Ever predictable, Sarah. Do you never grow weary of using your duty as an excuse to avoid any thoughts that might disturb your equilibrium? No, don’t refute it. Here.” He drew a crystal from thin air, and showed her the throne room she’d glimpsed once before.

There was a circular depression in the middle of it, something that looked a bit like a conversation pit, ringed with low padded benches. Goblins jostled against one another just outside it, and in the center, on a heap of blankets, lay Lucy Merritt.

She didn’t look hurt, or even scared. She was falling asleep, curled on her side, clutching a doll to her chest. Her hair was mussed and her feet were dirty, but she looked content, trusting that the creatures surrounding her wouldn’t harm her. For their part, the goblins seemed almost reluctant to approach her.

Sarah heaved a deep sigh of relief. She should’ve demanded to see the girl first, before she began this insane run, but for some reason she hadn’t doubted it. Once she’d known Jareth was real, she’d known precisely what had happened. Now, though, the certainty that Lucy was really here, and safe for now, was all the balm she needed.

And Jareth had done as she asked, yet again, despite clearly being angry with her. She looked up and met his mismatched eyes, catching a hint of something almost fearful in them. “Jareth, what do you want me to say?” she asked quietly, sounding defeated.

That old, crooked grin of his came back. “What else? Your right words, Sarah.”

And that wasn’t an answer. Sarah couldn’t bring herself to ask what she truly wanted to know, despite her fear, but there was another question lingering in her mind. The one she was sure she already knew the answer to. “Jareth—those dreams. Was it … was it  _real_ ?”

The smile faded, and he regarded her with complete seriousness. No anger, but none of the cruel whimsy she remembered from her first visit, either. Then his gloved fingertips touched her jaw, just once, the briefest of contacts. “What do you  _want_ me to say?” he asked her, softly and almost sorrowfully.

And then Jareth and the crystal were both gone.

Leaving Sarah watching the space he had been seconds before. Her breath came as a shudder. The burning in her eyes wouldn’t be denied this time. And there was the answer. Once and for all, there it was, without even a confirmation. Biting her lip, Sarah felt the tears come. The same raw, ragged grief that had surrounded her that morning when she had slammed the door between the pair of them, between her and this world rose up around her. The day she had lost a part of herself in the slamming.

Sarah dropped her face into her hand, covering it as she stumbled backwards against a tree, overcome. The last of her emotional armor cracked and fell away. But even as she felt it leave her vulnerable, she felt something else. Something like a smaller, warm hand touch her shoulder. Familiar, soothing, almost golden. Violets. She could smell candied violets.

She’d stopped wearing that violet perfume on her eighteenth birthday, wanting to be more adult. The ghost of that girl had come to comfort her and Sarah could almost feel her arms around her now. Fading into her. In the aftermath of it all, it was coming back.

_Real._

“Oh God, I _did_ do this. I didn’t mean to. I _never_ meant to. I didn’t know. Oh my God…” 

He was right. Denial had done this. Making herself see what she had not allowed herself to before, the changes in the Labyrinth, in Jareth himself, she could feel the truth there.

Oh, God, what had she done?

 


	16. Dare You to Move

Somehow, she couldn’t remember exactly, Sarah had managed to pull herself together again. It had taken time she was sure she couldn’t afford to spare, but she felt as if she had gained back a piece of herself in the sobbing. No, she  _had_ . No more denying what she knew had occurred. Something was happening and she felt the stronger for it. More herself than she had felt in a long time. Her eyes more open. She’d been lying to herself for too long. 

After that confrontation with the king—and with her long-forgotten self—the bridge seemed like less of a threat. Sarah forced herself to focus on the task at hand, and set out to cross it. The stone was fairly smooth, but at least it was dry, and her shoes had enough tread to grip it. She walked in the exact center, looking ahead instead of down, making sure to keep her pace slow and steady. Maybe if she didn’t think about the edges…

That notion failed immediately. The bridge was narrowing perceptibly, and Sarah couldn’t help noticing it in her peripheral vision. She tried to pay it no attention, just putting one foot in front of the other, but when the span she trod was only two feet wide, her legs simply refused to move.

Sarah let out her held breath in a sigh. “ _Dammit_ . Okay. I can do this. It’s not  _that_ bad, it’s plenty of room. I could probably dance across it, if I wanted to.”

But not waltz, her treacherous mind pointed out. Five steps into a waltz, her heel would be off the side there, and  _oh shit what a drop…!_

Squeezing her eyes shut, Sarah tried to remember how wide the bridge had looked a moment ago. The fall meant nothing, she wasn’t  _going_ to fall, there was plenty of room. And only the slightest breath of breeze moved up here, nothing like a wind that could make her stumble.

While her eyes were closed, she felt as though she were leaning, just the tiniest bit, to her right, and corrected by leaning left. The first had been just a paranoid illusion, though, and Sarah snapped her eyes open, fixing them hard on the crest of the span, holding her arms out for balance.

Safe for the moment, she focused on her breathing until it was steady. This place was full of subtle tricks, more dangerous than the traps she’d threaded past earlier.

“All right,” she said aloud. “Not that much farther to the top, and then it gets wider as I go down. I’ll be fine. Just, step by step.” Another deep breath, and she gave the ghost of a grin. “Come on, feet.”

Holding her arms out like a tightrope walker, Sarah advanced another twenty feet or so. The  _pitch_ of the bridge was steeper now, and it narrowed even more dramatically in this last stretch. Her throat made a dry click as she swallowed, staring at it.

The stone was maybe eight inches wide at its peak. If it had been a balance beam at the gym, just a foot off the floor, she could’ve walked it easily. Ten years ago, she could’ve run blithely along it, utterly confident and more willing to risk a sprained ankle if her confidence was misplaced. Now, though…

Her eyes felt almost  _dragged_ downward, and her heart shriveled in her chest. Those were  _clouds_ . And they were  _below_ her. Somewhere down there a bird called out harshly as it soared above the ravine.

_That’s it, I’m done, screw this nonsense. I can’t go forward, I can’t go back, and I damn sure won’t call on_ _**him** _ _for help. Nope. I’ll just stand here ‘til I turn to stone._

The hysterical note in her own thoughts wrung a rusty chuckle from Sarah. She even sounded like her melodramatic fifteen-year-old self again. “All right, think,” she muttered. “How the hell do I get across this last bit?”

If she summoned up all her bravado and walked it, there was a better-than-average chance she’d end up going over the side. And she wasn’t entirely sure that Jareth  _could_ rescue her. Not to mention, she didn’t want to be rescued. She wanted to win against the Labyrinth and then kick his ass on her own terms at the end.

_Then why are you being dumb?_ Toby’s voice asked in her head. She didn’t believe it was true telepathy, just the kind of thing he would’ve said if he’d been here, and right then Sarah longed for her kid brother’s optimism and occasional flash of snarky insight. Enough so to listen to that phantom voice with curiosity.

_There’s a sure way to get across: get down and crawl. There’s a reason babies crawl before they walk. You’ll have more support, you won’t have the height to overbalance, and you never have to balance on just one foot. So why haven’t you done it yet?_

“Pride,” she laughed ruefully. Jareth was probably watching this from one of his crystals, and she didn’t want him to see her _crawling_ over the bridge. Not only was it undignified and embarrassing, he’d probably have some comment to make about the way the jeans fit her ass.

She didn’t need Toby’s voice to tell her that in a choice between potentially falling to her death—in the Bog of Stench, mind you—and looking stupid for five minutes, crawling was the only sensible option. What was a little ignominy compared to that horrifying drop below her?

“Aw, hell,” Sarah muttered at last, and then raised her voice. “If you’re watching, you voyeuristic jackass, let it be known that I _can_ let go of pride when the stakes are high enough. Can you?” On that dare, she lowered herself slowly to her knees, and crawled—carefully--across the highest and most dangerous part of the bridge.

Only when it was two feet wide again did she breathe a sigh of relief. Her hands were shaking a bit, and Sarah took a moment to steady herself before standing up again.

And finishing the rest of the bridge,  _carefully_ , even when it seemed wide enough that she could’ve broken into a run. She stepped off the stone and onto solid ground at last, and the sudden release of tension weakened her knees enough that she had to sit down, her head in her hands.

This wasn’t just about her, or about him. It was about the Labyrinth, about this strange and wonderful place. Most of Sarah’s life, she’d held onto her time here even while she denied its reality. It had been a well from which she could dip a little wonder to refresh herself against the banality of life, and even when she’d barred the dreams away she hadn’t quite succeeded in forgetting. In a very real way, the Labyrinth had made her who she was: a savior of children.

Knowing that, her course was set. Despite distractions, obfuscations, and revelations, one thing remained clear as crystal: she had to save Lucy. Maybe even save herself along the way, find the part of herself she’d willingly lost, but that was second to the safety of the person in all this who hadn’t called on the Goblin King, hadn’t chosen to be mixed up in it all. Lucy was an innocent, and Sarah had to protect her.

And time marched onward. The quality of the light had changed, and by Sarah’s guess she’d used up more than half of her thirteen hours. She took a deep breath, got back to her feet, and set on for the castle. The junk heap lay ahead.

 


	17. No One to Catch Me

Sarah paid no attention to the ground fog at first. When it was just misty wisps kicked apart at each step, it seemed like nothing more than an annoyance, in that she couldn’t see her footing clearly and might stumble over a protruding rock or chair leg. She was more concerned with traveling in the right direction and not getting lost amid the piles of trash, and even when the fog rose to her knees, she ignored it.

The land dipped, and as Sarah started down, the fog was suddenly waist-high. It had an unpleasant spoiled-milk odor, but after the Bog, that was almost refreshing. She sighted her way toward a large tree poking up through the junk, planning to scramble up it and make sure she was headed toward the castle. By her reckoning, she should’ve been getting close to the city walls soon.

Just then, the fog billowed up, lapping her head in curdled mist. Sarah coughed, and it rasped in her lungs. She couldn’t see more than a few feet around her, and the air was suddenly hard to breathe.

Muttering voices surrounded her, speaking lines she remembered from the past. “She’s such a dreamer, always off in her own little world that’s all about her,” Karen said, off to her left. Sarah spun in that direction, but nothing was there. “It doesn’t matter how hard I try to get there, I just can’t reach you,” Barton said behind her. “Sare, you’re such a weirdo sometimes. Totally not right-in-the-head,” Toby chuckled.

“What the hell is this?” Sarah snapped, but her voice came out oddly muffled by the fog. And those voices grew louder, now saying things she’d never heard from them before, but hellishly plausible.

Her father: “Still _this_ foolishness after all these years, after you’ve come so far? You disappoint me, Sarah.” Barton: “It was your fault, you know. I tried, you didn’t. You were never there at all, were you?” Her agent from the Los Angeles days: “You never could go along to get along, could you? Little Miss Perfect, always too good for anyone or anything.” Her psychology professor: “You were always unstable, surely you’re aware of it.” And her mother: “Oh, sweetheart, please. As hard as you tried, you never would have been me. No range to speak of and far too prim. Never would have made it. Too afraid to do what was necessary.” And Toby, low and sad: “You let the goblin take me away once. You let them take me because I was the center of attention. Because there was more going on than just you. What if it was down to you or me again someday?”

Wheezing, Sarah stumbled onward, no longer sure of her destination. She just wanted _out_. The voices were probably all in her head, but that didn’t make them any less hurtful. The fog only seemed to thicken, clogging her nose with that spoiled smell, and Sarah banged her shoulder into something hard.

Jareth’s voice, mocking: “How could I ever _love_ a girl like you? You’re a fool, Sarah. You always have been. Still with your dolls and costumes, pretending to be the heroine you never were. Did you really assume that you were more than a day’s entertainment to me? I _let_ you win, just to get rid of you. Really, what use would I have had for you? Far too old to be a goblin. As for these fantasies-”

“That’s not true!” she shouted, falling to her knees. Rage gave her the strength to get up again, but her lungs were burning and she had no idea which way was out.

A noise like a thunderclap, and the fog momentarily dispersed. Sarah sucked in a great tearing lungful of fresh air, even as she heard Jareth’s voice again. “Sarah, _run!_ ” he commanded.

She didn’t, turning toward him instead, needing to see if it was really him or just another misdirection. They were in a clear space in the center of the fog, and he had come to her in armor this time. His hands were outstretched in a warding-off gesture, and she briefly hated him for having to rescue her yet _again_.

Then she saw the creature.

It looked like a cross between a musk ox and a giant toad. Slimy skin was covered in warts everywhere that didn’t sprout long, scraggly hair, and a pair of short but wickedly sharp horns protected its head. Beneath its staring yellow eyes and bulbous snout was a grotesquely wide mouth.

That mouth opened, disclosing jagged teeth, and it spoke in a deep voice foreign to Sarah. “Exile I name you,” it said, and Jareth froze, his mismatched eyes going wide. “Outcast from my demesne. You are sentenced to be King of Umardelin, the Unruled Lands, the Goblin Realm, until such time…”

“ _No!”_ Jareth roared, and whatever magic he was using collapsed, the fog rushing in toward both of them. Sarah could hear him coughing and gagging.

The voices overlapped them both, seeming to come from everywhere. Sarah heard herself mocked and denigrated by everyone she cared about, but she _knew_ it was a trick, now. She was groping along the fog-shrouded ground for something she’d seen in that moment of clarity, and paying more attention to the voices she didn’t recognize. Those were calling Jareth a failure, a disappointment, king of ashes and master of nothing.

Somehow, she had enough presence of mind to wonder what it was talking about, what sort of _sentence_ had been imposed on Jareth. For the first time, Sarah wondered what his life had been before her arrival—hell, for the first time she was certain he’d _had_ a life and a history long before her. This place and its people were real, perhaps more real than herself, and if she’d had time to think she might’ve made the connection to the wise man’s mutterings.

As it was, she lacked both time and air. Still, Sarah’s fingers closed on a hefty stone, and she grinned savagely. Her vision was graying out, but she remembered where the creature was, and she’d always been a good shot with a softball or a rock. Knowing they were _both_ in danger and running out of chances to save themselves, Sarah put all of her willpower and determination into this one act. And all of her anger, too. She didn’t have time to analyze it, but she was definitely feeling protective of Jareth, and furious at the creature that attacked them both. 

“Hey, ugly!” Sarah croaked, and wound up for a screaming fastball. “Eat this, you lying sonofabitch!”

The rock flew, and she heard it thump home more loudly than she would’ve expected, heard the creature grunt in pain and surprise. It was just enough distraction to silence the vicious taunts, and in their absence Jareth recovered his composure and his magic. His ragged voice snarled a word that lit up the fog and crackled like lightning. The creature screamed, and Sarah could hear it stamping away. She was fiercely glad that she’d saved Jareth, for once, but didn’t have time to exult in it. Her pulse was thunder in her ears, even as the fog began to lighten, and she collapsed. Her throat had closed to a pinhole, and her vision was black, awareness fading. She could actually feel her heart slowing, its beat faltering. She thought, and knew it might be her last, _Who’s going to explain this to Toby?_

Stumbling footsteps beside her, and Jareth swearing. His hands at her face, her throat, and Sarah was dimly aware that he’d torn her blouse open. She could feel his hand on her chest, feel her heartbeat suddenly start pounding again, and feel the blockage in her throat ease. But all of that was distant, as if it took place miles away and Sarah merely watched it with mild interest. It was too late, without air in her lungs, even now her brain was starving for lack of oxygen.

Suddenly there was air, a forceful breath pressed into her, sweet clean air that woke the fire in her lungs all over again. Sarah found herself gasping for air, her back bowed and her hands clutching tight…

… to Jareth’s arms as he bent over her, naked fear in his eyes. She understood that he’d saved her, pulled off the magical equivalent of defibrillation and literally breathed life into her. Only then did she realize how close she’d come to dying, how horribly narrow the margin between life and death really was, and the only possible way to react was by seizing him in a desperate kiss. Sarah pressed her lips to his as hard as she could, still panting with renewed relief, pulling back only to draw several shuddering breaths before slanting her lips across his again with a soft murmur. Gently worrying his lower lip, she felt her fingers slip into his hair. Her emotions were too raw, too confused, to make herself question them. In this moment, she wanted this contact, needed it, and wouldn’t judge herself for it.

His arm snaked around her back to support her as he drew her up into a sitting position, and Jareth kissed her back just as greedily. The hand that had been on her chest slipped up to the nape of her neck, cradling her head. That kiss was the most intense Sarah had ever known, awake or dreaming; Jareth kissed her like he’d been the one suffocating, and she was oxygen.

When she finally tore her lips away for air, he tangled his gloved fingers in her hair and pulled it taut enough to make her eyes fly open wide. “I told you to _run!_ ” Jareth snarled at her. “You should not have stayed to save me. Damn your eyes, you are _not_ allowed to die on me, Sarah Williams, do you understand that?!”

 


	18. How the Mighty Fall

_Everything’s dancing_ , her younger voice echoed in her mind distantly.

But this had been no peach, by any stretch of the imagination or meaning. Sarah’s mind just swam then, though, that halo-y effect still surrounding her reminded her all too well of the onset of the fruit’s hallucinogenic state. All she could do for that moment was stare up at the Goblin King with wide eyes as she tried to process everything that had just happened.

And, if she didn’t lie to herself (something she was all too good at, she had realized), she was still staggering from the kiss, her lips still tingling from the pressure. His words, his tone, floored her. They both knew there was something between them, but this was the closest they’d come to recognizing precisely what had happened between them. To being the people they had been back then. A part of her wondered if the after-effects of the creature’s attack were causing his reaction, which was enough to drive her speechless.

For all that the line in the book had reflected her childhood declaration of his love, Sarah had always dismissed it as mere literary convention. Not everything in books came true, and she wasn’t the only one to have read those words, so why would it apply? To her then, when she felt her own heart rebel and choose within the dreams, it was only dreams. What did it matter that she lost herself in him when it was only there? And she would not tell him, not ever, so again, what was the harm? Yet there was fire there, a magnetic attraction that had just grown in her mind when she had fooled herself that no one would know. It had shamed her to carry those warring emotions around in her heart, but now she had to admit she’d loved him for years, figment of her adolescent longings or not.

Even in her fever-dreams, though, she’d never expected anything complex or lasting, though in its own way it had certainly been complicated. Wanting one another was easier; it was safer, almost. More honest, she had told herself, to the people they were. Did Jareth, the mighty and arrogant King of the Goblins, even know how to love? He knew possession, need, and, as they had proven together, most definitely lust, but _love_? And what did it matter. When there was nothing they could do for it, in any case?

Even here, now, in his arms, it was safer just to desire him. But she’d had enough of _safe_ , of hiding from herself. Lying to herself about who she was and what she wanted. If nothing else, this tour through the Labyrinth had taught her that. The fear in his eyes behind the angry outrage, the same mix of conflict that she heard in his tone, neither were reactions she had ever expected to see. For the first time, in her heart of hearts, Sarah found herself questioning the lines she had first read in that little red book. _But what no one knew was the King of the Goblins had…_ Sarah stopped herself there, almost frightened to think it. The words were too much. Truly questioning Jareth and his actions this time; the last time, even. All that talk of generosity…

Could it be more than lines in an enchanted book? Was there an actual possibility that there was something even more going on here? Not just the strands of emotional connection between two parted lovers? Maybe it hadn’t been so one-sided. Maybe the book…

Everything felt off-kilter, even surreal. The world was spinning, spinning. And she was trying to make sense of the last fifteen years of her life. A life that had only existed in fantasy that was now shattering its cage and seeping into her waking world. No wonder she was stuck in a spiral. Her lips trying to curl into a smile at the thought, something that wouldn’t have been quite so funny had it occurred to her hours ago. _I think I would’ve rather faced another ballroom full of sniggering courtiers than this, near-death or not. And the look on his face. Never thought I’d see the day._

A quiver still in her voice when she spoke aloud, Sarah finally managed, “Not how it works. Attacking _me_. Didn’t have to, but … you did. Again. Not fair … to leave you. Besides … never listened … to you. Why start now?” Unable to stop herself, she felt her lips quirk into a tiny smile.

He scowled at her. “You impossible creature,” Jareth muttered. “That beast … it is nothing the Labyrinth ever harbored before. And it would have killed you, had I not intervened. Me, it might have injured, but my kind are difficult to kill.”

Perhaps aware that he’d revealed too much in the last few moments, Jareth smirked, his eyes going veiled. Sarah was still actress enough to _watch_ him schooling his features, putting on a mask of arrogance. “Besides, if you die, however will I savor my triumph over you? I prefer you alive and vanquished, Sarah, to dead and martyred. Though it matters little to the child.”

There was much she needed to think about, but Sarah didn’t have the opportunity just then, only smirked at his need to clarify. Even had they not been dancing, waltzing really, around their issues, she wouldn’t have believed he wanted her dead. Not now, anyway. The smirk grew stronger at that.

Jareth let his hand slip down to her throat again, catching her torn blouse and pressing the fabric together to cover her chest, and the quirk of her lips disappeared. A whispered word, and it knit itself back as if he’d never ripped it. She barely had time to think how useful that was in a world where sewing machines might not exist, but then his hand slipped along the swell of her breast, down to her hip.

Even as she opened her mouth to smartly protest this declaration of his victory, her body responded to that suddenly-unexpected touch, still laying back in his arms. It had seemed as if he was returning to the status quo, but had doubled back. Perhaps the Goblin King was just as mixed-up as she herself. Banked embers burned brightly in that instant and Sarah caught herself before her back arched into him slightly at the touch. Something, something she remembered better than she wanted to, flared up in her belly. She caught his eyes and held them, knowing and defiant. Having caught her breath now, her voice was stronger when she spoke this time. Raising her head again, stopping a breath from his lips, she lowered her lids a little. Two could play at this game. “Oh, the child has nothing to worry about. Rest assured, your majesty. I might have saved your ass here, but we both know that this battle isn’t over yet. Consider this a generous instance of truce. Because I’m still going to wipe the floor with you when I get to the castle. ‘Vanquishing’ will have to be crossed off your agenda for the day. Not happening. ” She grinned up at him, knowing what she believed she knew, but undaunted, still.

He’d responded unthinkingly to her lowered eyes, leaning in as if to kiss her again, but the words at such odds with her body language halted him. Her playful tone was surely much different than her suspicious behavior thus far, and he noticed it, a smile starting at the corners of his mouth. Then Jareth grinned, full as fierce as her own. “Oh, your generosity is much appreciated, my Sarah. And I shall look forward to your _attempt_ at defeating me.”

There it was again, that hint of possession. _My Sarah_. A part of her warmed to it now, in this hurricane of new knowledge, but it still annoyed her to feel as if he were claiming her. She wasn’t an object; the sooner he learned that, the better. Letting the glare show in her eyes, she murmured right back. “Uh-uh. Not ‘your Sarah’. I’m not anyone’s pretty little ornament. I don’t _belong_ to you, then or now. And you know better than to take that attitude, Jareth. That’s how I beat you last time. Look how close I am to the Goblin City. I even got help from their King.” Her smile was a little smug, and she still hadn’t pulled back.

Up close, she saw the iridescence flicker in his eyes, but this time it didn’t seem linked to anger. Some other strong emotion, then, though _what_ precisely she couldn’t quite say. There was amusement in his tone, even affection, but those were too lighthearted to call up the stormy glow in his gaze. “You are no more ornamental than a sword, Sarah—and we shall see who belongs to whom, when and _if_ you reach the castle. You may find things somewhat more challenging in the city than you expect.”

Sarah had to smile again. It truly was an enormous understatement, coming from him at this point. So far, nothing in the Labyrinth had been what it seemed or even what it had been before. That her last large obstacle to reaching their final confrontation would be more of a trial didn’t surprise her at all. But, having soldiered on through the rest of the chaos that had tried to put an end to her, Sarah prepared herself for what was going to come next. No matter how she felt about him, even if she was starting to feeling more and more torn, she was going to follow this through. There was no other choice. Lucy was going home, no matter what it could cost her. She didn’t make it this far, face down this last creature, only to be thwarted in the end. What she would do about this with the Goblin King, she’d have to figure out later. “ _Everything_ has been somewhat more challenging than I expected. But I’ll make it there, Jareth; you can be certain of that. I wouldn’t make any future plans for the girl, if I were you. I’m going to take you down, Jareth. _That_ I promise you.”

“Be careful what you promise, Sarah,” he warned. “I believe you will win your way through to my castle; I believe you would move Heaven and Earth and half the fae kingdoms to do so. But it is not only the goblins you must defeat, and until the clock strikes thirteen, I am still your opposition.”

Despite those words, he leaned down as if to kiss her again, and Sarah felt his hair tickle her cheek. Yet before his lips could actually meet hers, he had faded away, leaving her with just a breath of his scent and the tingle of magic all along her skin.

And her suddenly falling back to the ground, perplexed and out-of-sorts. The words to damn him came to her lips, but she stopped herself with only a muttered growl. She had lost herself to the moment there, let down her guard, but she should’ve known better. Jareth had a point; no matter what lay between them, the actual fight for Lucy would continue until she could face him down properly. There was no telling what their final stands would be this time, but Sarah now found herself both spoiling for it and dreading it equally.

If she had seen what she had thought she’d seen, heard what she thought she’d heard, he was right. There were still dangers untold in the Labyrinth. Hardships that had to do with a battle of a very different kind. And, maybe, just maybe, the goblins were not all he was warning her of.

It was drawing close to mid-afternoon now from the look of the light and she needed to be to the castle by dark. Time moved differently here, but it had been dawn when she arrived. What would have been around seven, maybe seven-thirty, in the morning, in her world. Even as it had been the same hour, but night, when he had magicked her here. It still made her head hurt to try and figure it out. All that was important was getting there before twilight rose up. Not just because of the time, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted to see what lay in her mind’s version of the Labyrinth at night.

With a deep sigh, Sarah pulled herself upright and dusted off her clothes. Laying here speculating was getting her nowhere and the clock was still counting down. Shaking off the last of the magic that still teased her skin, she made her thoughts lock down again on her mission. Now wasn’t the time to be lying in the grass, ruminating over time equivalences and sexual tension with the Goblin King. She was close now, within sight of the Goblin City and the castle beyond. _For my will is as strong as yours…_

With that thought in mind, as well as question of their final battle creeping around the edges, Sarah was again moving along the path that would take her to the child and whatever came after.

 


	19. Feel Alive and Shatter

At last she arrived at the gates to the Goblin City. This time there were no visible guards, but she remained cautious. Sarah tiptoed through the gates, staying as quiet as possible. She had no Ludo to summon rocks to her defense, no Sir Didymus to valiantly fight off the goblin horde. Somehow she just knew that her lack of allies this time wouldn’t equal a lack of defenders.

 _What can they really do, though?_ she asked herself, despite Jareth’s warning. _They had cannons last time, but their aim was awful. More a danger to each other than to us. And they weren’t really doing much harm even when they had us cornered in that house. I was holding them off with a skillet._

Sidling around the corner of a dilapidated house, Sarah confronted the first living thing she’d seen in this section of the less-generous labyrinth: a chicken. It looked at her with beady bird eyes, clucked in alarm, and scampered off. She barely stifled her laughter; few things looked as ridiculous as a running chicken.

As if the chicken had raised an alarm, Sarah heard scurrying feet from all directions. Something about the sound gave her pause. It took her back to Central Park, and Alli’s frightened voice over her phone, the way her heart had pounded when they surrounded her. Nothing else in the Labyrinth had been the same as it was before. What if the goblins themselves were less like the comedic creatures from her first run, and more like the goblins of legend?

So far she’d been spooked by a giant snake, nearly died in a pitfall, almost fallen from an absurdly high bridge, and had been poisoned by the creature in the junk heap. Sarah decided that finding out how the goblins had changed would be a bad idea. She abandoned stealth and ran for the castle, trusting the greater length of her legs to outdistance them.

The moment she broke and bolted, they burst out of hiding as well, a flood of angry chittering little beasts scampering toward her from all sides. Goblins were  _fast_ , and Sarah jumped the front rank of them reflexively as they swelled toward her like a vicious tide. No cannons, this time, but she heard the heavier tread of mounted knights somewhere behind her, and ran faster than she ever thought she could. They were right at her heels, laughing and taunting in squeaky breathless voices. She opened up another notch of speed, and thought she heard them falling behind. 

By then, Sarah could see the castle just ahead. She grinned at the thought that she was simply outdistancing this last threat … and that was the precise moment that a goblin jumped onto her back, claws sinking through her shirt as it squealed in triumph.

 

…

 

In the castle high above, Jareth watched in agitation as the goblins swarmed over Sarah. They were under strict orders not to harm her … but goblins were notoriously disobedient. And he could not, dared not, save her from  _them_ . The earlier challenges were different. He could not take the field against his own subjects.

All he could do was pace, and bite his knuckles in frustration. She was so  _close_ , she had even begun to understand what was truly at stake. Sarah had stopped looking at him as the villain and begun to realize the meaning of his last words to her so long ago. They had even gotten the issue of the dreams out into the open. The stage was set for a lasting victory… 

… and now his goblins were the last obstacle before the castle itself. She’d run from them, when standing her ground would’ve been wiser, and Jareth knew that chasing a fleeing target emboldened them. “Stand and fight, Sarah,” he muttered.

She did that, snatching the one on her back off and flinging it. But there was a hesitancy to her counterattacks, for which he cursed the socialization of her world Aboveground. Mortals often taught their girls not to fight, or if they must strike out, to withhold the full measure of their strength, and that showed in Sarah’s battle against the goblins. She was holding back, and they knew it, redoubling their attacks.

“They are fae, they are stronger than they look, you cannot harm them,” Jareth said, wishing she could hear him and not daring to project his voice. This was torture, being a spectator only to a battle of such great import! And yes, if he were honest with himself as he could be with none to witness it, he _loathed_ watching her in peril. To have come so far only to risk losing her _now_ was unthinkable.

Pacing the tower, Jareth struck his fist into his palm in frustration. “Fight, Sarah, it is in your blood, it is what you are. You had courage enough to stand against  _me_ , so fight!”

 

…

 

Teeth sank into her ankle, and Sarah yelped. Her reflexive kick spun that goblin away, but two more jumped up on her, and their claws went right through her jeans. “Ow! Knock it off, you little bastards!” she snapped, losing her temper. Real anger fired her next blow, and she knocked them both away.

More claws on her shoulders, and one of them was in her  _hair_ , one of the tiny ratty ones. It hissed in her ear, “Failure! Fool!”

Sarah shook her head violently, dislodging the goblin … and a lock of her own hair, which made her cry out in pain again. “I’ve had about enough of this, I’m warning you!” she shouted.

One of the larger goblins crashed into her leg, clinging. “You will lose,” it said in a deep, hollow voice.

Another one jumped and bit her arm. While she shook that one off, yet another climbed the front of her shirt and gnashed its teeth in her face. “Pawn! Idiot!” She gave a wordless cry of fury and snatched it by the scruff, throwing it as far as she could. The goblin bounced twice and came back for more.

“You think you know what you’re fighting for?” another goblin growled, latching on to her other leg. Immediately, smaller goblins ran up the backs of their fellows, claws pricking everywhere as they laughed and taunted her.

Another one was in her hair on top of her head, her scalp burning as she tried to shake it off. “We are all the children you failed to save,” it hissed, and that froze her for a second.

_Oh God. They_ _**are** _ _ children, some of them. Maybe all of them. Children someone wished away, who turned into goblins. I can’t hurt children…  _

That put the brakes on her defense, just when she’d begun to fight in earnest. The whole flock of them cackled at her hesitation, and surged over her. The sheer weight of them brought her stumbling to her knees, sharp little teeth worrying at her legs through denim. Sarah panicked, trying to lunge back to her feet, but they were burying her in their own bodies, mocking voices overlapping.

“No prophecy-girl!” one crowed, and bit her earlobe. “Just _lunch!”_

Sarah shrugged and flung an elbow at it, knocking that one loose with a furious growl. Fear was rapidly becoming terror, as every goblin she scraped off was replaced by two or three more. They were grinding her down, in another moment she’d be face-down in the dust of the road, and they were crushed so close she couldn’t even swing an arm or kick anymore.

Last time, she’d dodged cannon-fire and knights who knocked each other off their mounts, goblins who could be defeated by a whack to the helmet with a frying pan or swept away by stones rolling through the streets. This time … this time they might actually  _ kill _ her, they were biting and clawing and yanking at her clothes and hair, cheering each other on all the while. Sarah knew better than most just how cruel children could be at their worst, and the goblins had all the savagery of a pack of sugared-up toddlers overdue for a nap, only with built-in weapons to express their tantrum-y rage.

A flash of thought realized that Jareth had kept them cowed for God knew how long, and why hadn’t the goblins simply swarmed him like they were doing to her? They certainly outweighed both herself and the king—it felt like Humongous was sitting on her back as the shifting mass of goblins quarreled over which of them would be close enough to bite next. Had Jareth run the longest con in history on them, or was this one more symptom of her unbelief making the Labyrinth more vicious?

_ I didn’t come so far to die in sight of the castle, _ she thought, and the panic and pain began to metamorphose under their own weight. It was all too much, and her stubborn determination meant she couldn’t just lie down in despair and die.

Sarah started shaking, but not with fear. It was  _ rage _ , the eternal defiance at the very bottom of her brave heart.  _ For my will is as strong, and my kingdom as great, _ she thought again, straining to get up.

Physically, she was overwhelmed. Her breath whistled in her nose with the stink of goblin-sweat, and her vision had gone dark. There were just too many of them, she couldn’t even  _ see _ , but something was building inside her. This was far beyond any anger Sarah had ever felt before.

The closest thing was when she’d striven to close that door on her dreams, but even then, it had been fear and guilt and sorrow that thundered in her chest. Now, though…

_ How dare you attack me, _ Sarah thought, her vision going golden.  _ How dare you bar my way. How dare you keep my friends from me. How …  _ _**dare** _ _ … you! _

Pure, hot fury welled up in her, and she unleashed it in a yell that was almost a roar. “ _ Get  _ _**OFF** _ _ me!” _

Her ears popped, and suddenly there was light. It was much like what Jareth had done to dispel the fog, but as Sarah lurched to her feet, she saw goblins rolling and tumbling and even  _ flying _ away from her. One of them had even been blown completely out of his armor.

“ _You have no power over me!”_ Sarah thundered, and the goblins took one look at her, shrieked, and fled. She looked up at the castle, expecting to see Jareth at a window, thinking it had been him … but he wasn’t there. And _she_ was the one exhausted, just as he’d been in the junk heap.

She stood alone at the steps of the castle, panting. Sarah stared at her hands, thinking about those ‘certain powers’ and Jareth’s claim that she’d done magic before. And she wondered, half in awe and half in anxiety,  _ What the  _ _**fuck** _ _ did I just do? _

 

…

 

Far above, Jareth had drawn back from the window, but he saw her in crystal clarity nonetheless. “My, my, what hidden depths you have,” he murmured, appreciatively.

For a moment there he’d been sure he would have to go down to her aid, and damn the consequences. He’d forced the goblins to accept his rule once, he could do it again. But just as he’d gotten ready to leap, he’d seen an _explosion_ of goblins, and Sarah had stood victorious as they ran for their lives.

It was magic, of course, born of their long connections perhaps, just now coming alive in answer to her need. That had been magic in the junk heap, as well, when she’d thrown a stone that struck the beast of voices like a missile. Raw, untutored magic, wielded bluntly as a hammer, but finesse could come later. The fact was, she was discovering her own powers, and that could only bode well for Jareth and his hoped-for conclusion to this run.

“My Sarah,” he said, with a slow smile, and turned to prepare the final test.

 


	20. Pomegranates Full and Fine

The castle doors stood open, and Sarah made her way up the steps, bloody and bruised, yet unbeaten, unbroken, unbowed. All she could feel was determination. She found the great foyer empty, and the throne room beyond it was just as abandoned.

Well, almost. A slight movement drew Sarah’s eye to a shelf behind the throne, where a crown made of goblin horns rested. And in that crown a vulture squatted, peering back at her; it clacked its beak once, defending its nest perhaps. “Because _that’s_ not twenty kinds of messed up,” Sarah muttered, keeping part of her attention on the bird in case it decided to attack her.

The throne room looked as if the goblins had fled in haste; plates, cups, broken bits of armor, and even stray weapons lay scattered about the floor. Sarah found the pit in the floor where she’d last seen Lucy, but the only thing there was a largish crystal. It showed Lucy, alone in a high tower room, still fast asleep. Someone had moved her to a proper bed and put a blanket over her.

Knowing she was still safe, and somewhere nearby, Sarah let out a relieved sigh. She caught sight of the clock then, hanging on the wall opposite the throne, which showed three hours left. Almost done, though she didn’t let herself think that whatever final challenge Jareth had in mind would be easy. He tended to save the most complicated tricks for last.

As before, Sarah knew she had to face _him_ now. It was the same implacable marrow-deep knowledge that had filled her years ago, when her friends had stood aside and let her go forth to confront the Goblin King unaccompanied. This was the way it had to be, and she braced herself for that room out of M.C. Escher’s nightmares, where gravity had been put on hold.

What she found at the top of the curving stair was something completely different. The doorway was dark, loosely occluded by heavy velvet curtains, and Sarah pushed through them gingerly. She felt a tingling throughout her body as she crossed that barrier, and scowled in the dimness beyond. Remembering too well the feeling of magic being worked on her, Sarah suspected another fancy costume change. She couldn’t guess what Jareth had chosen now, other than knowing it was a dress of some sort.

She had to move onward to find out. The room held many flickering candles, their warm light sparkling off faceted crystals hanging from every candelabra and chandelier. Despite that, she couldn’t see far, with swaths of sheer fabric draping down from the ceiling. They cloaked the room in a haze of deep blue and smoky black. Sarah moved toward a brighter spot, where a cheval mirror awaited her. Only then did she see what his magic had done this time.

Walking into the castle, Sarah had been hot, tired, and sore all over from the various trials she’d faced. Now she was refreshed. Every scrape and bruise and scuff was gone, her skin soft and clean as if she’d just stepped from the bath. The clothes she had been wearing were gone, jeans and blouse replaced by a dress. The same trick he’d pulled in the crystal ballroom, only this time it wasn’t a virgin-white ballgown that floated around her like a cloud.

No, _this_ dress was deep amethyst shading to black, with dark gems gleaming at the neck and wrists. It clung to her body so that every step was a silken caress, and the left side was slit all the way to her thigh to allow her to move freely. The neckline rose high to clasp her throat in jewels, but the back was open, baring skin down her spine so far that it was probably a good thing she wore nothing beneath it. She had to smirk. Most would be shocked and outraged. Really, knowing his whims as she did, this did not surprise her in the least. At least he was consistent.

Instead of her childhood slip-ins, she now wore heeled boots of luxuriously soft leather. And her hair which had been pulled back in a sensible bun was now caught up with more jewels, the soft waves of it tumbling down her back. She even caught a hint of jasmine and amber rising from her dark locks. Awfully thorough, Jareth was, even remembering to perfume her hair.

Sarah couldn’t help a wry smile. At fifteen, her heart had raced at the thought of a pretty gown, a royal ball, and the courtly attentions of a prince. The vision Jareth had shown her had made her feel all warm and fluttery, the way she thought romantic love was supposed to feel. The dream he’d snared her back then in was every girl’s fantasy.

Emphasis on _girl_. At almost-thirty, she knew the difference between love and lust, and exactly which one _this_ dress was meant to embody. And this was not a moment to be in denial.

She stalked forward, moving easily between the draperies, following the path of the light. A dress this ostentatiously sexy could only be worn one of two ways: shy and embarrassed, or proud and haughty. And she wasn’t a naïve little girl any more, whose forbidden dreams culminated only in trembling kisses full of yearning. Nor was she the lonely young woman who had believed her dreams of passion meant nothing beyond the satiation of desire. For the first time in years, she knew who she was without the slightest doubt. Who she had been all along, underneath all of the lies she had told herself. She was Sarah, the Champion of the Labyrinth, grown into her own power and knowledge, so she wore the dress like it was her own idea, her own victory. A woman arrogant enough to believe she loved a king amongst the fae would have to.

Eventually she came to an enormous canopied bed, on which Jareth lounged. _Oh, come on, really. Jareth, you are too much._ Her eyes danced with mingled amusement and not just a little interest. Sinfully tight black pants, a crisp white ruffled shirt, and a vest of deep gunmetal blue velvet, he was a vision to tempt any woman’s desires. And he _knew_ it, the bastard. He knew her tastes too well not to press his advantage, it seemed. His gaze followed the outline of her body, even as hers followed his, and that crooked smile curved his mouth appreciatively.  Even as she kept her composure, Sarah wanted to smile. All too aware of his preternatural beauty. How completely and utterly Jareth.

There was a part of her, had _always_ been a part of her, that wanted to surrender right then. Given the choice between being trapped with him here in a realm of magic, or returning to her mundane life, what girl or woman _wouldn’t_ be tempted to let herself lose the contest? Those damn dreams had always hinted that the surrender would be a delight.

No. As always, when she actually had to make the choice, the answer could only be _No_. It wasn’t about her this time. Sarah was not the foolish girl who’d made a regrettable wish and come here to rectify it. She was older and wiser, and the woman she had become would never have allowed a child to fall into the Underground’s deceptive, dangerous clutches. Sarah silenced the romantic in her, keeping her mind fixed on her purpose: saving the child.

“Really? So, after everything leading up to it, _this_ is the Goblin King’s last stand?” she said thoughtfully, that one brow rising while surveying him with the same frank appreciation he’d given her. Two could play at this game, and she was no innocent. “Tell me something, Jareth, are you meant to be another distraction? Or is this some other trial? Or is it both?”

“I should certainly hope you do not consider me a _trial_ to be suffered,” he said.

Her lips quirked up in echo of his smile. “I’m not answering that.” He was so many things: solace and torment, vexing foe and attractive partner. But always a mystery. Despite certain revelations in the course of her run, Sarah still couldn’t say that she had any real idea of what was going on behind those mismatched eyes.

She decided on caution; underestimating the goblins had cost her badly, and she wouldn’t dare underestimate _him_. “I don’t know if you remember the rules rightly. I believe I’m expected to say my right words here somewhere. Wish you away. Something about barn owls flapping their way into the night. Aren’t you going to try to make me reconsider, remind me of the ‘gift’ you offer?”

“Is that not what I was doing?” Jareth asked, shifting to angle one knee, the better to display just how form-fitting those pants were. Sarah managed not to bite her lip.

“Oh, is _that_ the gift this time? I appreciate your complete lack of guile there,” she asked, his form of speech informing hers, and now her voice held a mischievous note as well. “Somehow I find myself unsurprised. So, let me test my understanding here. If I choose to accept, you would be my lover, in the flesh at last?”

“No, Sarah,” he corrected, a flash of wicked mirth in his eyes. “I will be your lover regardless, in the truest sense of the word as one who loves you. Should you accept the gift and my rule, I will be your _king_ , and you my queen, to be worshipped and adored forever.”

Warm tingles of excitement crept up her spine. It was the way he spoke, the way he looked at her, the way he had laid himself open in such clear invitation. No other man, no matter how ardent or skilled, had ever made her feel the same way Jareth could with just a look and a smile and a few well-chosen words.

The part of her mind that had taken all those useful psychology courses spoke up then, despite having mostly fallen silent during the end of her run. _This is all a dream, of course,_ it said, very reasonably. _And this magical bad-boy is the embodiment of all your fantasies. Clearly your subconscious mind wants you to confront this archetypal antagonist and conquer him before moving on. Otherwise he’ll always be lurking in your dreams. And since this isn’t real, it doesn’t count if you turn the tables on him. Use his own weapons against him._

It sounded good, sensible even, despite the way her senses insisted that this was all _real_. It was her last defense as well, the last barrier her tenacious mind could throw up against the threat of loving a phantasm.  Sarah knew that, on some level, yet found she couldn’t quite silence the doubt despite ample proof of this realm’s reality … and ample proof that Jareth considered her much more than an adversary.

Maybe it didn’t matter whether this was objective reality or just the truth inside her own mind. Either way, this confrontation echoed into her past. And she knew exactly how she wanted to resolve it, once and for all.

The words, no matter how many times she spoke or thought them, still echoed with power. “For my will is as strong, and my kingdom as great,” Sarah murmured, stalking toward him. The dress flowed around her, and she was viscerally aware of her own power. That she now found herself to be something more than she had ever dreamed. Jareth had his magic, of course, but she was finding hers was the ancient magic of her womanhood, the power to enthrall that needed no enchanted peach. He was everything masculine, all leather and hunger and dominance, and she would meet him with everything that was feminine, with silk and temptation and eternal defiance. The battle of the sexes, not in some silly boardroom quarrel over salaries, but raw and real in this primal dance between them. A fight for equality in magic, wit, and will, once and for all.

The look in the Goblin King’s eyes went from lascivious to startled to very pleased when she approached. Sarah sensed her own victory at hand, and spoke proudly. “I have feared you, Jareth, and certainly loved the _idea_ of you. So I have only to do as you ask, and you will be my slave. No tricks, no lies. As I remember it said, your people can’t directly lie to mine. You will not attempt any foolishness, I have your word? Is it not so?”

“It is so. No more deceits, no tricks.” He extended his hand to her, firelight from the candles flickering in his gaze. “And I ask you, my lady, to _come here_.”

She was all too aware, in the back of her mind, that she would likely be playing a dangerous game here; now and in this moment, Sarah truly didn’t care. The time had come to call in this debt. And there was a rightness to it now. There were three hours left and she knew her right words, though she would not speak them. Not now. She also wondered if they would survive the aftermath of whatever would pass between them.

He could not win merely by bedding her. The oath had been struck; she needed only to seal it. And seal it, she would. The time had come. Sarah smiled, and it was a predatory grin much like his own. She took the last step to the bedside, and took his gloved hand as well.

But when Jareth would have risen to draw her down beside him, she put her other hand on his chest and pressed him firmly back against the pillows.

The bemused look on his face only intensified when she straddled him like a queen taking possession of her throne. “Very well, then,” she said, enjoying his surprise. “If it is a contest of wills you seek, you shall have it, and we will see who wins.” She shifted her weight, making herself comfortable, and grinned still more wickedly at his very tangible reaction. _Let’s see who really has the power here,_ she thought, and bent to claim him in a kiss.

 


	21. As If We're Meant to Be

Sarah expected him to assert his will over her, possessive after so much time and struggle between them, but the Goblin King seemed quite content to let her lead the dance. He stretched out beneath her, his gloved hands lightly tracing her sides, his eyes full of curious interest that shadowed his own secrets.

Smirking down at him, she asked lightly, “What, don’t tell me that you’re already _exhausted_ from living up to my expectations? And we’ve not yet even begun.” Her green eyes were impish as the quirk of her lips deepened. Two could play at this imperiously jaded charade. “And after all this time. Seems, in the end, I should have chosen an antagonist with more stamina.” They both knew she was goading him, her recall all too clear now.

“In truth, I was never your antagonist,” he told her, his voice so low and warm that she could feel it rumbling in his chest, vibration running up into her palms. “Adversary, yes, we find ourselves in conflict, but I was never the villain you imagined me to be.”

 _Not_ the response she had expected. That sparked her own curiosity, and Sarah tilted her head, her hair tickling her shoulders as she moved. “Oh? Then what exactly _were_ you, Your Majesty? Tell me truly. I’m all ears.”

“Are we not all the heroes of our own stories?” Jareth asked, his touch resting feather-light on her hips. “You who brought ruin to my realm, you thought yourself savior and heroine. And now you’ve come to claim your prize, have you not?” He shifted ever so slightly, reminding her of exactly what that prize might be.

At that, it took all her will to catch and hold the gasp she trapped in her throat. At least she managed to only let her eyes widen a bit. Too many details of those dreams were coming back to haunt her, reminding her of rapturous hours spent with him. “I came to burn your kingdom down a second time; is that what you’re trying to say? You really think _you’re_ the hero?” Sarah asked curiously, aware that her voice had grown husky—and not caring.

For a man lying supine beneath her, his smile was entirely too satisfied. “In my story, of course I am. In yours, I am the prize. Precious love, other women have to settle for a mere _prince_ to bed and wed, happily ever after. _You_ get a king.”

A husky little chuckle then, resettling herself slightly against him before giving a slow, shifting stretch of her bare back. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. We both know that’s not the way _we_ do things, Your Grace.” Slowly, she shook her head, her smirk blooming into a knowing grin as her long hair danced. “I came here to best your labyrinth yet again and this time, maybe just best its King at his own game personally this time. I came for your crown and your throat, not your hand.”

But, like it or not, the Goblin King’s last comment had hit a mark she didn’t like considering. Too many thoughts too many years gone. Too many soft, brittle, soap-bubble dreams. Better to keep things at the level they were. “Honestly, Jareth, are you really going try to pretend _that’s_ what this is about when I’m wearing _this_ , with nothing dreamed up underneath this time? Let’s not mistake one four-letter ‘l’ word for the other. The white dress doesn’t interest me this time, but you giving me a child does. And we both know _which_ child.”

That flash of a wicked grin then, cutting off any response he could have given, one opalescent-lacquered nail shimmering in the candle-light as she placed a finger over those too-often-sinful lips of his. Sarah’s eyes had gone dark. No, no more time for foolish childhood daydreams. Not if this was the one chance. Not if she didn’t have to explain. This moment out of time was about need, hunger, and getting what they both had wanted for years. Only this time in truth. One last time, one last battle of wills to pay for all.

“There was never a chance of weddings and happily-ever-afters for us, Jareth; that’s not ever been what our story was about, was it? Never was. Then or now…” Something in her chest ached at the thought, a younger Sarah in tears and denials of what she wanted when she could never possibly keep it. There was no time for that; no more time for longing for a time and a world that had let their chances slip for something else. There would never be anything more than this moment. And she wouldn’t let him answer, couldn’t risk that he might tempt her with that most attractive of lies.

Leaning forward to plant her hands near his shoulders, Sarah closed her eyes on those chaotic thoughts. Concentrating on sensation, she slid her upper body up the length of his until she caught his lips, giving a delicate arch of her hips against his to shatter those iridescent dreams that her mind had built once the gates between their worlds had closed so long ago. The reminder that this was another time, another run, another ‘hallucination’. The shudder of contact almost undid her again, the feel of him beneath her more real than anything she’d felt in her waking life in years, but she held it trapped behind her teeth. She would _not_ be the first one to break. “For the moment, in the ceasefire, let’s take what we can get before we have to end this. Jareth, please, just give me that.”

“Speak not of endings, Sarah, not so soon,” he murmured, and caught her lip between his teeth in warning. “But yes, love, take what you will … and so shall I…” Until then, he’d kept his hands at her sides, the tips of his fingers playing along the fabric of the dress. Now his hands met at the small of her back, strong and sure, and leather-gloved fingers trailed slowly up her spine.

Sarah swiveled her hips again, savoring the feel of him, and he arched up to meet her, a slow roll like standing on the deck of a ship as it crested a wave. The sheer strength beneath that lazy gesture startled her for a moment; she was pinning him down only in appearance.

She was no fool; this was, itself, an illusion. If Jareth willed it, she would be on her back beneath him in an instant—and that knowledge only whetted her appetite. It was the strength of her will that ruled him, and thinking of wills and kingdoms and contests between, she captured his mouth in another kiss.

This time, he kissed her back with care and thoroughness, lips and teeth and tongue. His mouth tasted of spice and temptation—and just a hint of peach-sweetness. Her lips curled above his; somehow, in her heart of hearts, she should have known. Another shiver, anticipation winding low in her belly, and she dared herself to take the last step, cross the abyss, step onto the high bridge in the windstorm. Sarah knew herself, knew him, and once the threshold had been breached, there would be no going back. No longer just painfully-sweet daydreams, no longer just the intense agony of fiery fantasies in the dark. As if there were any choice at all…

Meeting him with a maelstrom of all of those nocturnal memories was the girl who once ate the peach and stormed his castle, turning down utterly all of his offered dreams she’d later hungered for. It was _that_ girl at the heart of the woman she’d become who intensified the kiss with abandon, shaking hands searching for the hem of his shirt as if it were life itself.

He stretched his arms up as if offering surrender, pulling the fabric higher so that she could slip her hands beneath. Jareth growled beneath the onslaught of her kiss, and as her hands began to explore the planes of his chest, he buried his own hands in the dark fall of her hair. Another arch of his hips lifted her, the steel at the center of him pressing against her molten core. That time, she couldn’t bite back her hurried, heated gasp, but her breath was stolen from his, and he swallowed the moan that followed it.

Greedy now, she tugged at his shirt, the buttons popping loose obligingly. That left his lean, pale chest bare to her view and her touch, the only adornment that amulet. The sleek metal felt warmer than flesh when she brushed against it, and Sarah sat back to examine her prize. Jareth was just as intoxicatingly beautiful as she’d always dreamed—and part of her hated him for it.

She felt the caress of leather across her shoulders and down her back as his hands trailed down with her movement, and she chuckled sinfully. “Too bad you magicked me into this dress,” Sarah told him. “I don’t even know where the clasps are to return the favor. _If_ I were so inclined.”

His lips curled up in what looked like amusement and indulgence. “Then allow me, precious one,” Jareth purred. One hand rested at her hip, and the other made a twirling gesture at her side—nowhere near the gown. Yet she felt a tingle of magic at the nape of her neck, and the halter of the dress was suddenly loose. The fabric didn’t fall down so much as glide across her skin, too slow for indecorous gravity.

The reality of the brush of magic, the too-brief feeling of it against her skin, combined with the suddenness of being bare to his gaze, made her close her eyes again before she was overwhelmed. It was as unstoppable as a raging storm, so long in arriving. Not a chance of hiding her response this time, the softest whimper drawn from her as she tipped her head back, not just a gentle buck in reaction. No, this time, she couldn’t stop herself from rocking against him with the beginnings of a gentle steady rhythm. If she had really only half-believed she was here this time, that this was the Goblin King beneath her, the need of him clearly pressed into the warmth of her, any of that foolishness was rapidly fading. And Dear God, if it wasn’t, if Fate was kind, she wouldn’t wake soon.

Only one tiny, wriggling concern remained, and before she gave in completely to the hypnotic spell of desire, it had to be addressed. “Not to break the mood, but there’s something in this battle we haven’t discussed. I don’t suppose you have condoms of any sort stashed somewhere, do you?” Sarah asked, swiveling her hips against him even as she hated her own responsibility. All she wanted was to abandon herself to the lust that fired her blood, but she found she couldn’t be _herself_ without also being practical.

Jareth huffed at her. “Of course not. Nor is such needed.” That was a hint of desperation in his voice, and of course she could feel his urgency.

She liked the barely-leashed impatience in his gaze, and smiled to see it. Sarah was half-willing to forgo precautions anyway. She was on birth control despite not seeing anyone since Barton. Still … “How do I know it’s not needed?”

“By my word as King, and by my honor, Sarah Williams,” Jareth replied. And then, in a different timbre, “I swear you shall have _no_ cause for regret.”

Tempting, very tempting … “So there’s no such thing as a fae STD?” she challenged, arching her brow at him slightly.

He scoffed, “The only scourge so transmitted in this realm is _children_ , and that is of no concern now. Sarah, _trust me_.” 

The hell of it was, she did. Any other man who even  _thought_ about trying to sidestep protection would’ve been warned once, strongly, and shown the door if he persisted. Jareth? Well, Jareth was  _persuasive_ , especially true given his current position, but more than that, she believed him. “Very well,” she murmured, and gave in—not to him. To herself, and what she’d stopped denying she wanted.

His hands spanned her stomach, rising to her ribs, and then he cupped her breasts. “ _Sarah,_ ” he muttered, and her name on his tongue was both blessing and imprecation. She drew a hissing breath at that possessive touch; there was nothing beneath her gown save skin, and the supple leather of his gloves felt delicious.

Not enough so, not to him, because he drew one hand back and bit the fingertip of the glove, using his teeth to draw it off. Right hand, left, and then it was skin to skin, gooseflesh prickling up her spine, and he gave another low, appreciative growl. Sarah had never seen the Goblin King without his gloves, she hadn’t even dreamed him gloveless—naked otherwise, but it had never been his bare hands on her body, the pads of his fingers stroking her breasts.

White-hot, the pleasure that stormed over her striking all her senses at once, and the world itself was all white. White and static-silence as her mind went blank. Once and for all, the bubble of disbelief she had blown around herself shivered like struck glass, shattering into a thousand pieces, the reality roaring to painful life as she uttered an audible, desperate, unstoppable moan. _This was no dream._ That fact was suddenly swift as a blow to the head. How many times, how many ways, but never…

Real, real, all real. No more denials. The dreams, all of them, were pale, translucent shades in light of the feel of that smooth skin triggering one of her worst weaknesses. He knew her; he hadn’t lied, he knew her dreams, had seen them. Modesty was a long-past imprudence between them. She was here and he was here and his hands … oh, dear God, his hands on her… Sarah was exploding into flames that she couldn’t allow to turn her to ash so soon. Fighting the urge to surrender to her cravings just yet, she dragged his hands away from her aching breasts with a breathless gasp, only to pull them around her waist and push him back into the pillows again. Had he continued, it would’ve been too much for her oversensitive nerves. Taking her pleasure that way that was not enough, not after all this time. She wanted more than that from him.

Her mouth found his greedily, fingers winding into his hair as she attempted to nearly _drink_ his want. Starved, but not of food. He answered her with all the need in him, gripping her hips and moving against her urgently. He breathed her name harshly into the kiss, his bare hands moving up her back…

…and then down again, her dress pooling at her hips, giving him a few more inches of skin to caress. His fingertips moved to the thin, sensitive skin just south of her navel, and her back arched in reaction, her eyes going wide.

Jareth was staring up into them, his mismatched gaze fierce with hunger. “My Sarah,” he whispered, and slipped his hand beneath the silken tangle of her skirt. There was no time to control her reaction; as his fingertips stroked the velvety-softness there, already slick with want, Sarah shuddered and a low moan broke from her throat.

He growled a word in some other language, something that chimed like crystal and set the edges of her vision blurring opalescent. “To hell with this,” Jareth muttered roughly. “I was going to be a gentleman, but I simply _must_ …” He didn’t even finish the sentence, catching her hips and tugging her up toward him. Sarah wavered with a startled gasp, having no choice but to catch the carved headboard for balance, and he seized a fistful of fabric, yanking the gown aside. His breath was hot on her thigh… His tongue was even hotter, licking sweet fire into her.

The cry she let out then couldn’t be denied; the pleasure as intense and strong as a thunderclap. Shuddering aloud, Sarah’s eyes were wide in disbelief as she clung to the wood against her searching fingers, back bowing taut enough that she could feel her hair dancing along her bare skin. He was … oh God, that was _really_ his _mouth_ on her. Jareth, who had haunted her for so long, the damned Goblin King, was … was…

The struggle to not go over just from that reality was enormous. The moan he drew from her then was high and keening, the cry of one that had been suspended so close to a treasured object without the ability to even reach for it. Even at their most explicit, her fantasies had never even been _close_ to what roared through her now, the craving so excruciating that she let him have control, have his way, in this instant. Transfixed and frozen, battered by the inferno he was stoking.

Her eyes rolled back; she shuddered so hard it hurt her chest, as another whimper broke from her, unguarded and wild. Raw need made her open herself more to him, their dreams in the past and the immediacy of now vanquishing any desire to hide her hunger. He knew her; was proving it even as her body threatened to buckle at his attentions. Until tonight, Sarah had never quite understood the phrase ‘boneless with desire’; she was getting a thorough education presently. A sudden movement of him inside her closed her eyes, losing her balance then as the world grayed out. Sarah shifted forward, leaned above him, her forehead pressed the hands clutching the wood. Somehow, somehow, she tried to ride the onslaught that threatened to overpower her. _My will as strong…_ _As strong_...

A thought, brief, floated through her: _I could die right here, right now, and not even care._

 


	22. A Path Between the Stars

And he seemed quite intent on killing her with pleasure. Jareth’s gloveless hands gripped her hips almost hard enough to bruise, holding her just where he wanted her while his lips and tongue teased and explored and delved. She arched and shuddered into every delirious second of it, not pausing to wonder if he could even _breathe_ , not thinking about him, not thinking at all. He’d taken her straight to sharp, bright lust that blanked out everything else.

Worse, it was too much and not enough, all at once. “ _Jareth…_ ” Overwhelming, stealing her breath in ragged panting almost-sobs, so close to the peak … and unable to reach it, lacking the completeness that would make her whole and utterly undo her. “Not … _fair_. God, not fair. You know … you know I _can’t_ … not from ... ” Sarah whimpered urgently, bucking against his hold on her, needing more. Somewhere deep inside, Sarah was grateful that he couldn’t see her expression, but knew as soon as she spoke that her voice colored the story all too well.

At last he let her go, just when Sarah thought she might lose her mind or have a heart attack, and his laughter taunted her over-stimulated nerves. “Still complaining of unfairness? You are _far_ too sweet for such bitterness to cross my mind, especially like this. Oh, precious love, the things I could do to you,” he murmured, soft and wicked. “But this was to be your conquest…”

He gestured again, and her gown was gone—along with his shirt. And his pants, and both of their boots, as it turned out. Jareth, King of the Goblins, wore only his amulet and his most generous smile. Her only response at first was to make her body move in this super-nova state, slipping back to straddle him, only to grasp his shoulders to pull him upright with her breath coming quickly. As soon as his mouth was within reach, Sarah fairly attacked it as if she were drowning and he was the last air in existence. Hands threading into his hair again, she managed to curl herself into his lap, her own dark locks falling into her eyes. Her first words, hot against his own, “Don’t be so … full of yourself, Your Majesty or … maybe you’ll miss the opportunity to be so … elsewhere. I _could_ take care of this myself … while you congratulate yourself… ” Even on the knife-edge of shattering to pieces, she found a way to defy him, attempt to deny him what she claimed to want. Despite shivering with craven need, hardly able to form sentences, her eyes were still tauntingly afire. “Or would your rather enjoy the fruits of your labor, so to speak?” And she was remarkably proud of herself for not mentioning peaches as she spoke so.

“I quite enjoyed the labor. Still, as my love wishes,” he purred to her, a flare of incandescence in his eyes. His hands dropped to the curve of her rear, lifting her gracefully, resettling Sarah right where she wanted to be—but not quite. He held her suspended, the hardness of him poised to enter her, but Jareth held back from that final claiming stroke.

His eyes flickered with iridescence, inhuman and magical and utterly _him_. Somehow Sarah knew he was at the very furthest extent of his control, and his husky voice proved it. “ _Is_ this what you want, Sarah mine? Not in your fevered dreams, but here and now in truth?”

Sarah’s control wasn’t faring much better, her breath quick and light. Clever quips were beyond her at this juncture. Never had anything been as addicting as now knowing the undeniably- _tangible_ feel of him, the taste of him. The immediacy of texture of his skin beneath her fingertips, the truth of knowing what she saw in his eyes now was not of her own imagining. _Fever dreams._ All of those nights, the way they had lit the fire in her blood, paled against this moment. Not even that first reckless time. The answer was so obvious, she almost had to laugh, but with a bitter-sweetness that made her heart ache. This might be the only time, the only chance for them. For everything they had discovered on this road, neither of them had spoken of what would happen after. After what _had_ to happen happened. What must be said would be said, and could not be unspoken. There was every chance that she would never see him again, once the deed was done.

She felt her eyes cloud over then before she could shake it off. Fine, she’d take what she could get. If that’s all she would be allowed after all this time, so may it be. She would take this one chance and make the once a forever that she could hold onto once she was alone again. Better the once than never to know in truth what it felt to have him.

One time pays for all and she would refuse any regrets that might wrack her later. It might be a devil’s deal for her soul in the end, this long-forbidden indulgence she was given as her triumph, but she’d brazen out the poison after. Tonight she didn’t care. The child was safe, she had his word. It was her price to pay. For the time left before the clock struck thirteen, he would be here and hers.

The decision made and tears banished, Sarah’s answer was growled just as fiercely as his own voice had ever been, green eyes meeting his boldly. She could feel the way she was shaking, determined to make the most of this stolen time. Just looking down at him hurt her heart and she doubled her resoluteness on holding back nothing. Damn him for being everything she’d ever yearned for. Holding on much longer wasn’t an option. “ _Yes_ , now, tonight, every inch of you I can manage,” Sarah demanded in a throaty murmur, nails biting into his shoulders. “I want to be able to feel you tomorrow.” An instant, two, steeling herself for what came next, never breaking their locked gaze, and then she slowly drove herself onto him with a low groan. _Oh dear God._ The world, her heart, everything stopped for a breath. Then crashed down upon her when she felt him return the thrust in response. Even when sensation threatened to close them, her green eyes stayed focused on his, widening instead. _God help me, let it be all I can possibly stand if it’s only now._

The flashes of reaction that swarmed over his countenance, in the depths of his eyes, were almost too much for her heart. There was no room for breath, thought, reasoning. Past and present, reverie and actuality, met, wound together, and burned themselves down in her mind. Close, so damn close. Within her. Just that, and the world was melting, burning too brightly. Belief. Reality. _**This**_ reality. This was really happening. Oh God, there was no doubting this time. From his opening gambit, moving against her strongly, she cried out despite herself. No, no dream, this. Not with how incontestable he felt inside her. A smile flitted across her lips as the wording crossed her mind. _Incontestable_. Oh, that suited. Jareth would have more than approved.

And he was the one to break their gaze. Here, now, a hiss and a rough groan almost too much to hear. She paused, shaking like a leaf; convinced she’d fly apart if she even drew a breath. Her words came out as a broken whisper then, no regard for how much she was giving away by the longing, the need in her tone. Not a thought for telling him too much of the truth in the breathlessness of the moment. “Slow, God, slow. Need time to feel you, need to remember every … every… ”

“Your victory,” he told her, voice harsh with desire and strained by how tightly he kept it leashed. “Your prize. Your pace, your choice, my Sarah, but the next … will be _mine_ …” His head thrown back, his body arching strongly toward her, his sharp teeth bared with the effort of holding back, and it had never quite been like _this_ in her dreams. But the dark promise in his words, _that_ was the same, and it called to her body without doing the courtesy of even notifying her brain.

The rest was like a dream itself, no more words save for breathy whispers of each other’s names. Bodies moving together in perfect sync, skin blazing, every atom of flesh simmering with lust. Sarah’s breath was hitching sobs, face pressed into his neck as she cried out. One deceptively-delicate hand curled around the back of his neck, her other against his hip, when the moment arrived. A feel as of light wind on her cheek. The fall had begun, impossible to stop now. The King’s last stand? Maybe this was her own, waves of intensity buffeting her as once again she found words trapped behind her teeth. Lines she knew in her head, in her heart, but that trembled on her lips, too stubborn to come forth.

_I have reordered time, I have turned the world upside down, and I’ve done it all for_ _**you** _ _._ His voice, in the past and in her mind now, ragged with defeat—and something more. Something her younger self hadn’t had time to examine. Something she could no longer deny.

_Everything you have asked for, I have done._

So close, the end. So close, shimmering through her like that heat-lightning in that long-ago summer, flaring brighter by the instant, feeling each strike, each almost-agonizingly perfect thrust as the seconds passed in a blur of white, gray, mellow gold, so-soft blue before her dazed vision. A whisper of iridescent white, opal. The flash of gold and silver in his pendant, both then and now. Back to those last interactions, always in the end. The ghosts of the last time they had burned one another.

_Look what I’m offering you. Your dreams._

That memory came back strong enough that her eyes shot open, his voice echoing in her head. Her chest tightened as the gravity of it struck her. He had offered her her dreams before the end, one last time; in the end, after the fact, she had unknowingly opened them to him. Offered them as he had once tempted her. _And for so long, all we had was dreams._ _Dreams._ _ **My**_ _dreams. They were his, too._ They must’ve been; at the beginning of her run he had warned her not ask what _he_ wished for. The answer was this moment, joined at last.

_I ask for so little._

Those dreams had been his only link to her; he had as much as admitted that it had been the only outlet to reach her. _Real_ ; in their own way, all of them had been real, as well. He had been there, she knew now, he had loved her as well as he was able. Knowing that now, the implications finally hitting her full-force, the sob that tore itself from her then almost scuttled them both.

_Fear me, love me…_

Sarah clung to him then, her pace against him suddenly urgent, reckless. Desperate. She could feel moisture on her cheek. No more dreams. No more after this. The words, she knew the words, had _always_ known her right words. Now, all, everything. All she could take.

So fast, so fast now. Running out, running out of time…

_What were the words? I know them, I know, I’ve always known, but always too late. What were the damn words?_

Her high whimper in the air, bright and sharp as glass, her last warning. Chimes. Somewhere, she could hear the continued echo of chimes, the ghost of memory. Every guarded emotion, so many moments she had locked away. In that breathless instant, Sarah could see him as she had that last time, in those last seconds when realization had come too late. Frozen in time, in her mind, deep down, the way he had looked at her before he had disappeared to her eyes. Before he was nothing more than gray gauze and flapping wings. The crystal dissolving, shattering in her hand _._ Only then did she know, sudden tears on her cheeks _._

 _Didn’t know what I wanted then. What I had started to feel. Too late. Gone. He was gone._ _I realized … I realized too late._

In the memories of that, the way a young Sarah had stood there in the living room, overwhelmed by a heartbreak she’d never expected, unable to breathe from it. Here, now, Sarah clutched him closer as she approached the heights, eyes closed against the storm raging in her, hearing his gasp, an low groan, and felt him move within her. So close to the fall. So close to the world exploding and she nuzzled her cheek against his hair, breathing him in.

 _ **Mine**_ **.** _You are mine, I am yours._

It was in that moment that the words finally came, once again blurted out as soon as she felt them, before she knew she spoke them aloud. Her world fading, burning, dissolving, Sarah whispered into the ear of the Goblin King, “ _I … I believe_. I believe in you, Jareth.” And then she buried her face under his chin as the entire world, like their long-ago ballroom, shattered from beneath her and she screamed out against his collarbone.

“My Sarah…” More prayer than possession, that time. One last desperate, reckless surge, his voice breaking on her name, and he joined her at the pinnacle. Both of them were broken by the force of the climax, falling back against the sheets, Sarah tumbling down atop him, Jareth panting harshly against her hair. He shuddered with the force of it, hands clenched tight on her hips.

After a long, breathless moment that echoed with revelations and fulfillment, Sarah’s pride blazed up fiercely. She had won, again. Despite all he could do, despite all everything the Labyrinth could throw at her, she was here in his arms and he was _hers_. Every taunting insinuation directed at her naïve fifteen-year-old self found its ending here, with Jareth hazy-eyed and murmuring her name blissfully.

 


	23. Push Me to the Floor

_Your worth is worth is worth nothing_

_when it’s at someone else’s cost  
Fortune’s not appreciated _

_When the sweet stuff_

_Comes too fast..._

 

_~_ _**The Parlotones** _

 

 

 

 

It was everything, it was real, at last she’d reached the point to which she’d been swinging like a lodestone all her life, and on some level she was surprised the castle hadn’t fallen down around them both. Sarah could feel his pulse inside her, and in the hazy afterglow a tiny particle of rational sanity was glad she was already on birth control, despite his earlier assurances.

The thought made her chuckle, just the faintest ghost of a laugh, and he nuzzled her temple. “What has amused you, my Sarah?” Jareth murmured, sounding just as pleasantly wrecked as she felt.

“Mundane concerns,” she replied, breathing in his scent and liking how it mixed with her own. “And I’m not _your_ Sarah. I’m going to teach you that sex does not equal possession if it’s the last thing I do.”

“My love, then,” he purred, drowsy-eyed and smiling, and she could _almost_ let herself forget there was a clock ticking somewhere. Hours left, though, as long as she didn’t fall asleep she’d be able to enjoy this. Just a little longer. It was so rare for him not to be combative; even in her dreams he had never looked so openly calm _._ Not smug, not gloating, but content with himself and with her sprawled atop him.

“What mundane concerns?” Jareth asked, his hand rising to toy with her hair, twining it around his long slim fingers. And then, answering his own question, he continued, “Did you fear that despite my word, I would get you with child, Sarah? That does not happen by accident for my kind. In truth, it does not happen often even when we wish it so. We are longer-lived than you, and the price of eternity is that we are not so easily blessed with children.”

Sarah felt a tendril of something like regret. In its own way, there was a terrible rightness to the logic. The belief, if there was any truth in it, was that the fae could grow to thousands of years, life lost almost exclusively by the very young or willfully-slain. There was, however, a sadness in knowing that.

The thought sobered her, only to forcibly shake her head, making herself give that shade of a chuckle. It was not her concern; not now, not ever. Here and this. There was only here and this. “Wasn’t an actual worry, to be honest. Just a passing thought. There’s a way Aboveground to assure that, too, and I’ve had that taken care of for years.”

That earlier thought kept needling her and finally she caught his gaze and reluctantly started to sit up. No matter how sated, how hazy-eyed she was, how much she’d needed closure, amends for the past, she had come here for a reason. And the man whose name she had screamed was the reason for _that_ reason.

If he simply meant this to distract her, she’d end it now, no matter how her stomach sickened at the thought. But she would not be used. Sarah braced herself to speak the words that might change their momentary circumstances. Once again with her lower body braced at his waist, her green eyes narrowed at him. “Speaking of a child … no matter what’s happened, no matter how I feel, we both know why I’m here. I haven’t forgotten. I _can’t_. This had better not be just a way to make me forget about the clock, Jareth. You’d better not be speeding up time while we’re here. Because, I swear to you…”

His hand covered her mouth, fingertips pressed to her lips. He didn’t even seem surprised at her worry. “If I wished to interfere with time, Sarah, I would slow its pace. What man or king would seek to _hasten_ this? But if it soothes you…” A simple gesture, and there was a clock on the wall that hadn’t been there before. The time it showed was close enough to Sarah’s own estimate of the hours that had passed that she could believe it was rule.

Not that she intended to rely entirely on any construct of his. Sarah leaned back, giving her tousled hair an arrogant toss. “I’d like to trust that, but you do have an ulterior motive here. Just … no matter how good this is, no matter how we both want it, I’m not leaving without the child. Don’t forget that.”

He laughed, and he’d gotten enough of his breath and composure back for that low, rich voice to send chills up her spine. “Sarah, _Sarah_. Still so blind. It has _never_ been about the child. You came here to rescue her, yes, of course, but more than that, you came to lay waste to my kingdom and remind me who is Champion of the Labyrinth here.”

She blinked at that statement, her chin going to stubbornly. It wasn’t true. At least it didn’t feel true. Did it? A chill ran down her spine. _Damn_ him. “Not hardly. _You_ took the child. You _made_ me have to come after you.”

“There was no other way to bring you to my realm, or to settle our unfinished business,” he told her. “Do not deny that you came to conquer, Sarah. I heard no apologies from you, no attempts at negotiation. Did you not say to me, ‘We both know how this goes’? Shortly followed by the declaration that I _must_ know you will win.”

He had her there, and in her moment of bemusement, Jareth tumbled her down beside him and rolled her under. His body arched above her, not pinning her down but making his ascension quite clear, and he smiled ruthlessly at her. “If you want a war, my precious Sarah, I will be more than glad to give you one. Especially considering the battlefield you’ve chosen.”

Her stubborn, defiant heart rose up, and with her chin thrust out she glared at him. She might want him, want to drink in every moment she could have, but she wouldn’t let him mock her. Her eyes flashed up at him. “If that’s what you want, sire, go for it. You wish for a war before I reclaim the child, let it be war between us, then. Let’s see who walks away victorious this time.”

Something in his gaze softened, and Sarah could believe it was honest admiration. “My fierce Sarah,” Jareth murmured. “The first engagement I ceded to you, as befits a Champion. Now to remind you, _I am your King_ …”

“Even if you win, even above me, you are not … _my_ … King. You _will_ never rule me, understand that. Try as you will. I’ll take the rest of your truce, but you will _never_ have that.” Even as the words left her lips, sudden remembrance struck her. She’d uttered words that felt familiar to those once before, growled in his face. When she placed it, her breath caught despite herself.

Jareth only chuckled. Evidently he remembered that particular instance just as well. “We shall see about _that_ , precious one.”

 

 


	24. Love, Draw Your Swords

War it would be, then, though Sarah still had only the vaguest inkling of the true stakes. Jareth himself could not afford to think of the curse, not now, when every word and gesture counted so dearly. It was difficult enough to focus, having forced himself to forget the way the beast of voices had stolen his father’s words and tone.

Outcast though he might be, this was a kind of war at which Jareth had always excelled. He set about laying siege to Sarah with every ounce of skill and art he possessed. And he had no intentions of fighting fair; if exploiting some small weakness revealed by her supposedly-private dreams was the difference between winning her or losing everything, then by all the old gods, he _would_ cheat, and feel no shame in it.

He would also take every advantage he’d learned in this first round of finally-real lovemaking. Sarah had surprised him, claiming him so boldly, but in truth that strength of character and will was much of the reason he could not bear to let her go. He’d tried to replace her, when she’d slammed down the barrier on the bond between them, and it had been a spectacular failure. After a lifetime of entertaining every flirtatious suggestion that floated his way, Jareth found himself pining for one human woman—the one who had denied him.

But she wasn’t denying him _now_. Jareth kissed her breathless, running his hands lightly over her body as if mapping every curve. Sarah wouldn’t be able to chart the random paths his skillful fingertips took, leaving her responding to each caress anew. She arched into his touch, biting her lip in a vain effort to hold back her reaction. Jareth chuckled quietly, nipping along the pale column of her throat. “My Sarah,” he breathed against her skin, just to hear her argue it.

“Not … _yours_ ,” she obliged him in a husky whisper. Defiant even as he felt her shudder, her breath quicken.

“Yes,” Jareth insisted, nuzzling her cheek, and drew back enough to catch her gaze. “ _My_ Sarah, mine at last.” And before she could protest yet again, he stopped her mouth with another searing kiss.

Any thought that this was unfair to her—that despite no longer being a blushing virgin unsettled by his mere proximity, Sarah simply couldn’t compete with the longer-lived and more widely-experienced fae—was easily silenced. That first round between them, she had led the dance with all the passion and demand he could desire. And that had _not_ been as he’d planned. He’d let her have her way because she wanted it so, and Sarah had proved herself his equal in the art of love, as she was in all things.

He had never known and could not imagine another who suited him so well, who was so perfect a match in both the romantic and competitive senses … but that thought led to the reminder that he  _had_ to win her over, that without Sarah all was lost, and Jareth dared not reflect on such matters now. He had more important concerns, namely, winning  _this_ battle.

Mortals often said that all was fair in love and war, though Jareth had not until now considered the similarities between the two. At least with Sarah, it was a siege, her heart the prize so carefully guarded by arms and armor. She would—and had, throughout this run—use her scathing wit to drive him off topics that approached too closely to her vulnerability. He was too familiar with the walls she’d raised around herself to keep him out of her dreams.

Now that barrier was in ruins, and only a more direct form of combat was left. Sarah’s fierce determination not to yield, to take her pleasure of him without letting herself surrender, was pitted against his own resolve to claim every atom of her being—mind, body, heart, even soul.

Toward that end, he marked his possession into her skin with tender love-bites. Sarah arched up into every kiss, trying to stifle the appreciative sounds in her throat but unable to do so. Jareth only smiled, and let his caresses grow more ardent. She writhed under him, cursing his skill and her own inability to resist. Even when she tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled it painfully taut with urgent swearing on her breath, he didn’t pin her hands as he might have. This might be war, but there was no place here for such force. And he had an ally behind the lines, as it were. All of those dreams proved that Sarah  _wanted_ to be overwhelmed, wanted to trust him and surrender, though even in dreams she had required persuasion and proof of his intentions. She was fighting herself as much as him, and any king worthy of the name knew that a war fought on two fronts was orders of magnitude more difficult to win.

She was simply too good an opponent for him to pity her that disadvantage, and Jareth savored his ascendancy over her now. He  _was_ winning, that much was clear, Sarah’s breathing harsh with arousal and frustration. Her emerald eyes were lidded as she met his gaze, and even now—even with her hips swiveling and her spine arching under his deft touch—a spark of defiance burned there. Let it burn; Jareth knew he would not love her half so well if she had yielded to him gladly.

“Mine,” he whispered again, and her lip curled in a snarl of denial that never made it into words. For Jareth drew her knee up, the better to let her wrap her leg around his waist, and claimed her again in one slow, inexorable thrust.

Sarah moaned, her head flung back, and he growled her name. No more time for teasing, or for meditations upon extended metaphors. Now they were truly joined in battle, in love, and he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in her even while she lost herself to him. “My Sarah,” he panted, and grinned wickedly as he added, “My Queen…”

Once, in dreams, he had said the same to her, and had the satisfaction of hearing her whimper assent. Now, she groaned, biting her lip, the struggle between her iron will and her wanton heart clear in her eyes. Her hands were wrapped around his biceps, giving her the leverage to meet each stroke eagerly, and now her nails bit into his skin. At last, her voice, ragged with lust, “Only if …  _my_ King…”

Even now, even when most women would be fluttering their lashes in paroxysms of pleasure and perfectly willing to let him do whatever he pleased as long as he didn’t  _stop_ , even  _now_ Sarah was negotiating the terms of her surrender. Oh, how he loved her! Jareth shifted the angle to make those glorious eyes of hers roll back with another throaty moan, and somehow he managed to murmur, “Yes, love.” 

It was no hardship to admit. Had he not claimed the title himself? With Sarah, possession could only ever work if it went both ways. Besides, there was no denying that he was  _her_ king, that no other could possibly be his queen. Jareth had tried—there were many who would’ve liked to be Queen of Umardelin—but it seemed his heart had molded itself to suit only her. Only this impossibly stubborn, terrifically strong, achingly beautiful human, whom he had known for half her life and without whom the rest of his life would be ashes.

“Then yes,” Sarah whispered, her voice ragged. “Yours … as you are _mine_.” Her ankles crossed at the small of his back, and she gave a low, glad cry, pulling him tight to her. Jareth was all too willing to respond to that demand for greater fervor. Desire—an older magic than his sorcery—swept them both away, and he had no more concern left for anything but Sarah’s pleasure and his own.

For an uncountable time Jareth lived in those moments, all he ever was or would be narrowed to just the pair of them and the ancient art of lovemaking. When at last Sarah’s spine arched sharply, and she surged up to meet him with throaty moans, he let her break over into the most glorious surrender. And, though he had won this round, he could not help but fall with her.

The aftermath found them curled up together, his lips pressed to her forehead, and for once Sarah snuggled trustingly into his embrace. Her breathing began to slow and deepen, but as soon as she realized it, she gave herself a slight shake. Those beautiful eyes opened to see his look of adoration—and triumph. “Don’t think you’ve won,” she warned, spoiling the effect by yawning.

“Rest, Sarah,” he murmured, and kissed her brow. And when she drew back, looking at him warily, he added, “I will not let you oversleep. Surely you realize I want to _win_ you, not merely have you concede defeat due to a technicality?”

She mulled that one over, her expression vaguely fraught, and finally yawned again. “Been a very  _long_ day, honestly. You did step in before,  _did_ save my life a couple times. I suppose it won’t hurt to have a nap before I beat you again.” There was a sleepy, impish grin on her face, but she was fading even then. She had to have been awake more than a full day of Aboveground hours. There was no further way to hide her exhaustion.

He stilled his tongue before he could tell her what he truly wanted. That was as well, for when he thought she already slept, those sharp green eyes opened to fix him with a warning gaze. “I’m trusting you, Jareth. We said this wouldn’t change the end result. I will not sleep too late for this confrontation to end properly. Promise me.” He had to fight a smile; Sarah was learning too well to choose her words with deliberate care.

If only all promises were so simple. “On my honor, Sarah, I will wake you an hour before the clock strikes thirteen.” With that, she let her eyes drift closed, and he set himself to watch over her.

 


	25. Your Flaws Upon Your Sleeve

When she’d fallen asleep, Sarah had been hot and sore and tired all over again—but this time, in a good way. A _very_ good way. Somehow despite years of dreams, Jareth had managed to exceed all of her expectations. And somehow, she’d found herself trusting him to wake her in time to say the words and defeat him. It sounded insane, but then, she _was_ in a faerie castle, bedding its king, as part of a contest to retrieve a stolen child. If that wasn’t insane, who was she to say that trusting him was?

She woke to his fingertips running lightly up and down her spine—which was a pretty good trick, considering her head was pillowed on one arm and the other hand was toying with her hair. Sarah blinked herself to full consciousness just to figure out how he was managing that.

“You look surprised,” Jareth said lazily. “You should not be. I have not yet shown you a tenth of which I capable.”

Some smug undertone made her look sharply at him: Jareth, the Goblin King, sprawled luxuriously on rumpled sheets … with a livid mark on the side of his neck from where she’d bitten him, trying not to scream. And somehow, despite their very enthusiastic lovemaking earlier, he had every hair back in place. _She_ probably looked a wreck, Sarah thought with equal parts aggravation and amusement.

To deflect his braggadocio, she made herself chuckle and roll her eyes, when all she really wanted was to snuggle up in his arms again. “All guys really _are_ the same. You can’t resist bragging on yourselves. If there’s better, why not lead with your A-game?”

“Time was short,” he responded, with laughter lurking under the words. “And I had no wish to overwhelm you yet. Magic has its uses, but it tends to be … extravagant.” Saying that, he set his fingertips lightly on her cheek. Just for a moment, then his magic sparkled across her skin, a little glittery trail that skimmed up to her shoulder and tickled the place behind her ear, where he’d discovered she liked to be kissed. Sarah couldn’t help a gasp, realizing how he’d woken her.

Jareth did laugh then, low and full of promise. Suddenly magic danced over her skin, following paths his hands and mouth had charted: trailing warmly down her spine, nipping the hollow of her throat, tracing the curve of her hip. Nerves that hadn’t quite stopped singing from the last few hours were all too eager for those attentions, and Sarah found herself squirming in delightful torment, caught somewhere between ticklish and turned on.

The flickering touch of magic cupped her breasts then, pushing the balance all the way over to arousal. She bit her lip against a hiss of pleasure, her back arching unconsciously, and felt that warm caress float down her belly to run along her legs. Much the way his hands had, when he’d kissed her there, and the magic accurately reproduced the sensation of his mouth on the thin skin at the hollow of her hip. “Enough!” Sarah squeaked, hating herself for the pitch of her voice and the way she couldn’t stop herself from reacting.

“Forgive me, my lady,” Jareth said in that insufferably self-satisfied tone. “I have given the matter quite a lot of consideration, and the last years have been time enough to lay precise and very _thorough_ plans.”

Realization stung her, mostly because of his tone. His damned smug all-knowing tone. Her occasional fantasies about him were one thing, but the implication that he’d spent _years_ planning exactly what to do with her … suddenly she felt less like a conquering queen and more like a fool. She knew full well what happened to humans who dabbled in the faerie kingdoms, knew all the dangers of taking a fae lover. It never ended well for the human, heartbroken by a creature that couldn’t truly love anything beyond itself.

Just that quickly, her trust in him was damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Little did Jareth know how furious it made her to be treated like a trophy, and despite their talk of battles, this hadn’t _felt_ like a conquest until just now. He made it sound as if everything, including kidnapping Lucy, was just about getting into her pants. And the fact that she’d been _fifteen_ the first time they’d met only made it worse. Perhaps all he’d wanted all along was to even the score, to recapture the chance he’d lost at a pliable human teenager. And she’d been the idiot to fall for it all over again.

Sarah sat up, crossing her arms to cover her breasts, the warm flush of pleasure dissipating into angry heat. “This really _is_ what you wanted the first time, isn’t it? The dress, the dance, all that business about doing everything for me. Even back then you wanted me to stay here and be your perfect little fairy-tale princess forever.”

“I would have said, ‘my queen for all eternity’. Phrase it as you will, you have the gist of my intentions correct,” Jareth said lazily, regarding her with no shame and perhaps a little amusement.

She glared at him, frustrated with her choices by reason. Sarah knew that if her teenage self had known just how he’d make her feel, how she’d come to see him, the answer to that final question was all-too-obvious. It would’ve been _yes_ a thousand times. Toby might even have liked being a goblin, who knew? At fifteen, at the cusp of her ridiculous romanticism, she would’ve traded her _own_ life for pleasure like she’d just experienced. “I was _fifteen_. Still mostly a child, by your own admission. And that is almost goddamn _predatory_ , just so you know.” The logic was sound, something she sadly encountered more often than she’d wished in her own career, but she was all too aware that this was a different situation entirely. It didn’t help to know that, in the eyes of his long-lived kind, not so long ago she would have been a wife and, most likely, mother at that age. It was no wonder it truly didn’t seem to phase him.

Jareth made a scoffing sound and waved his hand dismissively. “I said the _gist_ of my intentions, not the whole of them. Do not think so ill of me, Sarah. I am not one of these men you save your young charges from, those who prey upon naivety. I wanted you for your courage and your will, not your innocence—as should be obvious, considering the lengths I’ve gone to getting you back to my realm now, when you have learnt wisdom. One might pluck the peach from its branch early, but only a fool would consume it before it was fully ripe.”

That should have reassured her, the admission that he wouldn’t have simply taken advantage of her fluttery infatuation, but the way he phrased it still irked her. He was still talking about her like she was a prize to be won. “I’m not a piece of fruit, damn you,” Sarah growled.

One impeccably upswept brow rose even higher, and his voice went low and warm. “Do you find yourself insufficiently devoured, my lady? I would be happy to remedy that.”

The words called up a sudden memory of herself clutching the headboard desperately for balance as he did just that, and Sarah blushed fiercely. She looked away, and spied the clock: less than thirty minutes were left. “Dammit! All right, the distraction _almost_ worked, I gotta give you that.”

He looked puzzled, then followed her gaze to the clock. Sarah couldn’t quite make out his expression, but she knew what had to be said next. As lovely as the last hours had been, she had a duty. “Jareth, give me the child,” she said, reaching for her dress.

“No,” he said, and there was a stormy look in his eyes as they locked on her again.

It caught her completely off guard. Time was too short to argue in, and she was nothing if not practical. Even here. So Sarah swept aside the fight she wanted to have in favor of blunt truth. “What … okay, look, you got what you wanted, and I have to admit it’s what I wanted too. But I _have_ to take her home again. You don’t get to keep the child no matter how persuasive you are.”

“And _you_ do not get to come here and abuse my hospitality so lightly,” he shot back. “Did you think the last hours were a mere _distraction_? Every time I think you’ve opened your eyes, Sarah, you only prove yourself more blind!”

Just like that, she’d lost her footing again, and Sarah tried to find her way back to what he really meant beneath the insinuations and half-truths. Closing her eyes, she pressed her lips together and sighed. She was so tired of hearing that, trying to guess his intentions. One minute, a shimmer of truth, of honesty, only to find it shadowed. It was their entire relationship, that image. Eyes still closed, she pressed her hand to her brow, kneading her right temple. “Come on, Jareth, what we are? When it all does fall down, what can we be? It only works in dreams, and only for so long. This was—”

He cut her off again. “I will not be your _kept man_ , Sarah. You bridled at the notion that I wanted you solely as a concubine? Remember that _my_ will is a strong as yours, and my _pride_ as great. Do not expect that you can traipse home and return to haunt my dreams at your leisure, giving me nothing more than your _convenience_.”

That gave her pause, and she opened her eyes looked at him in astonishment. That had not been the response she had been prepared for. “What are you saying?” she asked, dreading the answer. “I have to take Lucy home, you know that. Just give her to me, Jareth. Please. I don’t want to fight you anymore.” And that, slipping off her tongue unexpected, was a truth that surprised Sarah. It was a given, what must be done. But she found she couldn’t bring herself to it, not even angry with him. She didn’t want to see him beaten. Not again.

“There are laws of magic that govern this realm, as there are laws of physics that govern yours,” he told her in warning tones. “They cannot be broken so lightly. The child was wished away, and _must_ be won back.”

“I _beat_ the Labyrinth,” she snapped, annoyed all over again by the implication that the last thirteen hours of near-fatal struggle weren’t valid. “Please, don’t make me do this, Jareth. I don’t _want_ to have to do this. Remind you that you have no—”

He had been, through most of their lovemaking, patient and thorough. Now Sarah saw how quick and how strong he could be. Jareth sprang at her, pinning his hand over her mouth. “Do not be so hasty, Sarah,” he warned again.

She glanced at the clock, panic rising, and he gave an irritated growl, taking his hand off her mouth to wave it at the clock. The hands stopped moving, ten minutes ‘til. “Be still, and think,” he demanded.

All that came into her confused mind was a line of song. “I thought you moved the stars for no one,” Sarah said in a small voice.

“No one but _you_ ,” Jareth insisted. He sighed, and passed a hand over his face, visibly collecting his composure. “Now, think carefully over your choice. If you take the child and return to your world, you will face what the Labyrinth showed you: boredom and banality.”

She titled her head, puzzled. “I thought the Labyrinth changed because I changed.”

“It has. It answers to my will, but also to the mind of the runner. Behold.” Jareth lifted a hand, turning his wrist, and a crystal ball suddenly rolled along his knuckles. Sarah looked into it, and saw the castle, the view pulling back to reveal more of the surroundings.

The castle itself had begun to sparkle again, pennants snapping in a light breeze. The goblin city had lost its brutal look, and was filled with bustling creatures again. The hedge maze was full and lush—or not entirely. Its outskirts were unkempt, but as she watched a wave seemed to pass over it, radiating from the castle and the city, slowly renewing the maze.

Sarah couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. “All this, because I slept with you?”

Jareth made an irritated noise. “No, my much-beloved and very blind Sarah. Have you forgotten so quickly what it was you said to me, at the first peak? _Because you believe._ The Labyrinth changes as you do. Now look, and this time, truly _see_.”

The crystal showed her at her desk, forehead cradled in her palm, the line of her shoulders defeated. Two days ago, that had been. Jareth continued speaking. “Before you came here, you had become disenchanted. You found yourself feeling as though you could make no difference in the world, as if your work was worthless and all your efforts merely amounted to trying to drain the sea. When that foolish girl wished her sister away, you were filled with purpose again.” In the crystal, she saw her own face at the moment Lucy had told her what really happened. The surprise, and then the fierce determination.

“All right, so this place has been good to me,” she began, and he scoffed again, turning the crystal. In it, she saw herself again, a montage of the years between her first visit and this one. Graduating college, taking on her first case, comforting children, listening to teenagers, helping their parents. Late nights of paperwork, phone calls in the wee hours of the morning, wanting to tear her hair out with frustration but never giving up. And all the little victories that made the setbacks so worth it, like being invited to her first client’s graduation.

“Good to you? This is the true gift. The Underground and I gave you _yourself_ , Sarah. Heroine, rescuer of children, defiant and determined in the face of opposition. Saving your brother made you who you are now. Would you have wanted to continue being that obnoxious little girl forever? I think not. But when the Aboveground paled and you began to lose your way, I arranged matters so as to bring you back to me, where you belong.”

“’Arranged matters’?” Sarah asked, in that very quiet and level voice her coworkers knew meant she was barely reining in her temper. All this time, she’d thought that Alli finding the book was a lucky—or unlucky—chance. If it wasn’t…

“I cannot directly affect the Aboveground, as you should surely know. Placing a certain book in the path of a girl seeking one, however, is subtle enough.” There it was, he’d admitted it. Her worst suspicions were true: he had deliberately put two children through trauma and very real danger, just to get her back here. And no matter what fancy phrases he tried to dress it up in, _here_ was his bed.

“Oh you manipulative _bastard_ ,” Sarah growled through clenched teeth, and got up, unable to be near him a second longer. He’d hinted at it before, but now he openly admitted the extent of his interference without a shred of remorse. Not only that, he was perfectly willing to let the Merritts drown in their grief, let Alli suffer under her guilt, and let Lucy become a goblin, just so he could keep Sarah herself. Queen or concubine didn’t matter, she was a trophy to him, and Sarah felt her fury burn hotter than ever before. “That’s it, we are _not_ having this conversation naked, put your damn clothes on so I can slap you in the face without—”

Another wave of his hand, and a dress flowed into existence around her, this one wine-red. A glance down at herself showed that the arms and bodice were armored rather than jeweled, for which Sarah was glad. Jareth himself was dressed again, in black armor, his cape flowing midnight-blue. He stood facing her, arms crossed, walking the crystal ball back and forth across his knuckles with a patient expression. “ _What?_ ” she snapped.

“You expressed the intent to strike me,” he reminded her. “This is your opportunity.”

 


	26. Your Right Words, the Goblins Said

Sarah raised her hand … and remembered how quick he he’d been a moment ago. There was no way, in an actual physical confrontation, she could possibly get the best of him. If she slapped him, it would be because he let her do so, and there was no victory in that. Slowly she lowered her hand, clenching it into a fist at her side, as her anger frothed with no outlet. “No. You don’t get to win, not even that little bit.”

“Ah, so you are beginning to see that there are more ways to win or lose than you suspected,” Jareth mused. “I wonder what you’ll do with that knowledge.”

Something about his tone made her pause, and Sarah looked at the clock again. Still stopped. He wasn’t letting her just claim her victory and take the baby, but he wasn’t pushing her to lose, either. “What kind of game are you playing?” she finally asked, frustrated.

“There are rules, Sarah,” he reminded her. “One of them is that I may not simply tell you what must be done. If you are to succeed, it must be by your _own_ wit. And I should warn you, this is the last time I will be able to bring you here.”

That was new, and despite her anger and confusion she stopped to consider it. “What do you mean?”

“One rule of which I can inform you: no mortal can be summoned Underground if they do not believe in its existence. Visiting here in your dreams sustained your belief for years, but you were not ready to return for good in your waking body. And once you were, I had to resort to rather _obvious_ measures to get you to believe again. You dismissed my summons in the dreams I sent you as if they were mere fantasies. Most enthralling fantasies, though.”

 _That_ made her blush. The dreams, of course. _Again._ Sarah was damned well sick of hearing about them. Still, she remembered dreams where he had invited her to his realm, but her dreaming mind had quickly turned it into another sort of invitation. “Making a big deal about the damn dreams is not winning you any points here,” she muttered.

“This is not about points, Sarah, it is about truth.” He paced toward her, serious now. “If you take the child and leave, you will most likely convince yourself that this was all a dream. I see a name in your mind, this Carl Jung person—you will tell yourself that you invented all of this, invented _me_ , that the Underground exists only in your own mind for the second time. If you can rationalize all of my realm away, I will never be able to summon you here again. Magic does not work for those who disbelieve and disregard it.”

“Lucy _has_ to go home,” Sarah said miserably. She didn’t want to face the thought of losing this place. Whatever was between them, she _did_ love this kingdom, despite all its madness. He was right, she’d convinced herself once that it was all her imagination, and still half-believed that right up until the moment he’d taken off his gloves and placed his bare hands on her skin. “Even if I wanted to stay, I can’t force the child to as well. That’s not _my_ choice to make.”

“You _must_ choose,” Jareth told her. In the crystal spinning across his fingers, she saw flashes of the past and present: herself at fifteen leaping to save Toby, herself at her desk piled high with paperwork. And perhaps the future, too: herself gowned in that deep royal blue that Jareth favored, a jeweled silver crown at her brow. Or herself, with defeated eyes and gray in her hair, trapped Aboveground and once again longing for a place she’d convinced herself wasn’t real.

Jareth spoke, quiet and solemn. “I cannot change the laws of magic, not even for you, my love. Whenever one is wished away, either the spell must be broken, or one must remain here for all eternity as my subject.”

Sarah stopped, and looked at him with dawning hope. He had always said ‘the child’. Now he said ‘one’, and there could be more than one meaning to that pronoun, even in the same sentence. “Could I … wait, no.” It would mean being his _subject_ , becoming a goblin. That wasn’t what either of them wanted. “Suppose I break the spell. Can I come back after I’ve taken her home?”

“Travel between the realms is not done lightly,” Jareth told her, his voice sorrowful. “Not even I, king of the goblins and prince of my kind, can come Aboveground in my own shape without an invitation.”

“So all those owls _were_ you,” she said, briefly sidetracked.

“Not all. You tend to see what you are looking for. But many of them were me, keeping watch over you.” There was something in his gaze, something almost desperate, as if he was willing her to come to the right conclusion.

Sarah paced, thinking furiously. Only one answer seemed to come to her. “Suppose … suppose I offer myself in place of the child. Send her back, and I will stay here with you. Does that mean I turn into a goblin and serve you?”

“Even when you first came here, you were well past the age at which a child can become a goblin. It would mean instead that you accept me as your king,” he said, slowly. Sarah had the sense that he was choosing his words with exaggerated care, treading as close to breaking those annoying laws of magic as he could. “It is a valid choice to trade your own self for the babe’s freedom. But I cannot tell you exactly what that might entail. You would have to trust me, Sarah.”

Once upon a time, trusting him was the last thing she would’ve ever done. And now, despite the last few hours, it was difficult even to contemplate. How easily she’d doubted him—he didn’t _act_ like a man who only wanted a trophy, it was just his choice of words that made her think he was objectifying her. Still, trusting him with her body for a few hours was a whole different proposition than trusting him with the rest of her _life_.

“I’d have to leave my work and my family,” she said in a small voice, thinking of Toby, who still looked up to her. And her parents, with whom she was on good terms these days. They’d _all_ grown up in the last fifteen years.

Jareth made a low, thwarted noise, his hands clenched into fists with clear frustration. He so clearly wanted her to make the right decision, and it had to be driving him half-crazy not to be able to just _tell_ her. For all that, Sarah couldn’t afford to leap to conclusions. This was her forever-after they were discussing, and she was still torn. She looked to him, waiting, for once not running away or pushing him to respond.

At last, he spoke, his tone reluctant. “I said travel between the realms is not done lightly. I did not say it was _impossible_.” At those words, a deep tremor ran through the castle, and Sarah stumbled. She whirled, and saw the clock ticking again, saw rising panic on Jareth’s face. Evidently he had just said too much, and the very foundations of the Underground shook with his transgression.

“Jareth!” she yelled, looking at him in terror. If she hadn’t believed completely in those laws of magic before, she believed in it now … and this was something bigger than both of them, something neither could control.

“There is no time!” he shouted, and indeed the clock was spinning faster. “Choose, Sarah, choose now and choose wisely! Have courage, and be true to yourself!”

No more time to consider, no time to weigh the options. It was impossible to concede defeat and keep them both here. So, escape with the baby and leave the Underground and Jareth forever. Or make another leap of faith…

The clock began to chime, and somewhere stone rumbled threateningly. There was a loud crack, and a sharp cold wind rushed through, snuffing out the candles and plunging them into darkness. To be true to herself, there was only one choice she could make, only one path that didn’t deny who she was … or who she loved. “My life for the child’s!” Sarah screamed in desperation, trying to send her voice and her choice to whatever power now threatened them both. “ _I love him!_ Let Lucy go, and I will stay here with the Goblin King forever!”

The rumbling stopped, the clock stilled before the thirteenth chime, but in the silence she could hear her own heart thundering. And it was still utterly dark. “Jareth?” she called, softly. “I love you. I choose you. Of my own will, I choose you.”

Only once the words were out there did she realize how true they were, and Sarah gasped at the sudden ache in her chest. _If I had left, I would regret it for the rest of my life. My God, I do love him, more than I thought even when I was afraid of how much I loved him._ She had to remind herself to breathe, relief pouring through her at the realization that she wouldn’t have to give him up. Or the parts of herself she’d lost along the way, and found again only here, in this realm of magic.

At first, only darkness and silence answered her. Then a faint glow began, the pearly-white of the crystal Jareth had been holding. It hovered in midair, and then the light began to spread, slowly. It showed her Jareth resplendent in his armor, his eyes cold and forbidding. “I am the Goblin King,” he said, his voice pitched to carry far beyond her, though she had no idea where they were anymore. “And I accept your bargain. It is done.”

Without warning, something cracked, a sound like metal breaking under impossible strain. Sarah yelped and dove toward him, thinking only that he might be able to protect her from whatever new danger _that_ was.

Jareth caught her up and kissed her hair, softly, reverently. The light gradually returned, revealing the same tiled floor she’d been standing on moments ago. “Hush, my precious one,” he told her, his breath quiet against her ear. “My brave, willful Sarah. You have won for us both. _Now_ I may tell you all that was denied. The curse is broken.”

 


	27. Sarai of Umardelin

“Curse?” she asked, looking up at him. The wise man’s cryptic words echoed in her ears. _Kings and curses and stolen children and women who cannot choose…_

His strange eyes had many moods, but there was always a hint of arrogance in them, even when he had confronted her wounded and all but pleading for her to stay, so many years ago. Not now. Now his gaze was relieved, and regretful, almost ashamed. “Yes, a curse. Placed upon a vain young lordling, who suffered from too much confidence in himself and too little concern for his duties. After a particularly outrageous incident involving trespassing Aboveground and nearly revealing the existence of the fae to humankind at large, he was punished for his presumption. Royal blood confers certain privileges, however, and a prince cannot be stripped of his rank. He can, however, be _promoted_ , to the ruler of a realm no sane lord would ever wish for. So a foolish and arrogant prince of the fae became a king of goblins, ruler to a realm that would never be entirely his to command. Not until a mortal solved his Labyrinth and choose to stay at his side.”

He smiled then, sadly, and to her surprise Sarah saw the man he was beneath the king and the magician and the otherworldly being she’d been in awe of. A man who could, and had, made terrible mistakes, and paid for them. “A mortal who would teach him to love something more than himself, and to suffer for that love, until he learned obedience and patience to win her heart.”

Sarah leaned against him, feeling oddly at home in his arms—in a way that had very little to do with the rather fantastic sex earlier. Everything seemed to be off-kilter again, not least Jareth acting somewhat normal. Almost … _humble_ , and that was a word that should never be applicable to him. “So, you’re not going to be the Goblin King anymore?” she asked tentatively.

“I will not relinquish my throne,” he said immediately. “It is merely that I am now King of Umardelin by my own choice and will, and not forced into this role by the circumstances of a curse. I trust you understand the difference.”

Sarah couldn’t help a little chuckle, snuggling into his embrace. All was right again, balance restored for the moment. All she needed to do was accidentally step on his pride to make that essential arrogance to flare to life. A smile crept in as she rolled her eyes. Back on solid ground again. Some things should never change. “Yeah, I get that.”

The light was spreading, revealing a room in shambles, the hangings mostly puddled on the floor and the sumptuous bed sitting askew on broken legs. Sarah could hear noise outside; it sounded like a crowd gathering in the castle.

“Sounds like there’s a riot out there,” she observed.

“A party, but the two are quite similar where goblins are involved,” Jareth told her. “They are celebrating the breaking of the curse and the fulfillment of the prophecy.”

Prophecy? A curse was one thing, but the notion of prophecy made her independent spirit rebel. Sarah’s heart went cold; there was no helping the suspicion that crept in then. She looked up at Jareth, having made her choice and still feeling foreboding. Not moving herself from her spot in his arms, her green eyes cut up at him. “Jareth, I trusted you. And I’m trusting you now. For your sake, you’d better be able to look me in the eyes and tell me all of this—starting with taking my brother and my last run and ending taking Lucy, sleeping with me, and me being forced to make a choice—all of this wasn’t _just_ about breaking some damn curse on you. Because I swear to God, Jareth, love you or not, if that’s what started all of this all the way back then, I will never forgive you. If I find out, even years from now, that you’ve used me—” The hurt flashed over her face, she knew it did, even as she tried to draw toward anger. God, she _really_ didn’t want to believe it.

“Hush,” he said, a touch of roughness in his tone. “I did not use you to fulfill the prophecy. I _tried_ to love someone to break the curse, more than once in the years before you were ever born. Curses are not so easily circumvented, Sarah. You are the one in the prophecy _because_ you are the one who defeated me and loved me and made me love you.” A short, bitter laugh then, and his arms tightened around her. “Trust me, there are many who would have gladly taken your place with less trouble and effort on my part. None of them were you, therefore all of their efforts—and mine—were in vain. Do not fear that you were manipulated, Sarai. No one as stubborn as you could be so easily moved.”

Mollified by that, she couldn’t help but notice a little slip there, and it was easier to discuss than prophecies. “What did you just call me?”

“Sarai. Your name, Sarah, means ‘princess’, but it is derived from the ancestral form Sarai.” Jareth nuzzled her cheek, and Sarah smiled. Then he whispered teasingly, “Sarai means ‘quarrelsome’. I find it so very appropriate, that it is the name under which I intend you should rule.”

“Now, wait just a minute, Your Majesty. _I_ get to decide what name I’m going to rule under,” Sarah shot back, and then realized what she was doing. With a merry little laugh, she nudged her nose against his jaw. “Lucky for you, I like Sarai. I guess I really can’t argue with the description. Although we’re only using it in an official capacity. Maybe it’ll help you remember I’m not just an accessory.” That said, she added, “As long as I stay myself on my own ground; I refuse to be anything but Sarah, even against the fae.”

“You could never be anything less than a queen by any name,” Jareth told her. “Speaking of which, it is time you met your subjects, Your Majesty.”

Sarah swallowed, her suddenly-dry throat making a miserable clicking sound. “That might be interesting now. I met the goblins before, a few hours ago, remember?” she told him. “It didn’t turn out so well.”

“I was watching,” Jareth informed her, taking her hand and leading her through the wreckage to the stair. “Never run from goblins. They can be bluffed, but like dogs they are compelled to chase fleeing prey. Despite that, you did well—and they have a healthy respect for you now, I’m sure. It isn’t every day that they find themselves at the center of a magical explosion.”

“Yeah, about that,” Sarah said, following him down the winding stair. “We’ve got to figure that out, because I don’t know anything about how magic actually works. I didn’t even know that morning; I still don’t actually know how I did it. I was going to ask you about it before, but I was distracted.”

He flashed her a toothy grin over his shoulder. “Blaming the breeches again, Sarah? Very well, magic in one breath: it is will, given tangible force. No wonder you have a gift for it. The rest can wait.”

At the bottom of the stair was a hall that led into the throne room, and Jareth pulled up short. “I almost forgot,” he muttered to himself, and cast a pair of crystals through a doorway. Sarah could hear them ringing off stone as they bounced down another flight of stairs.

Still holding her hand, he brought Sarah into the throne room, and the goblins already noisily celebrating there increased their volume to a roar. They swarmed toward their king—no, toward their monarchs, Sarah realized—but stopped just short of touching either of them.

“Goblins of Umardelin!” Jareth proclaimed, and somehow he pitched his voice to carry over all the chirruping, chittering, grumbling, and mumbling. “I give you, _Sarai, your Queen!_ ”

She’d thought it was a roar before. A wall of sound thundered over Sarah, and she knew she couldn’t flinch from it. Instead she held her head proudly high, looking the nearest goblins directly in the eyes as they whistled and stomped their feet. After a moment, the noise died down a bit, and Jareth said in a manner absurdly reminiscent of Karen, “And what do we say?”

Silence, a moment, as they all looked at each other. Sarah couldn’t help biting her lip in sympathy for them, so clearly befuddled. And then the response came from behind her, in a voice she hadn’t thought to hear.

“ _Long live the Queen!”_ bayed Sir Didymus, as he and Ambrosius charged toward her. She turned, her heart in her throat, and saw Ludo and Hoggle not far behind them.

 


	28. Home Again

There really were no words for how unbelievably grateful Sarah was at seeing all three of them, grinning at her, after all these years. Even Hoggle managed one for her. Weak with relief, she moved forward on trembling legs. They were okay; all of them were before her, real as before. In all of this, she hadn’t lost them, hadn’t harmed them. Even after all of her denials, they had been returned to her.

In this rush of assuagement, Sarah barely noticed the ragged goblin chorus of “Long live the Queen!” She swept Sir Didymus into a hug as Ambrosius jumped up at her, barking gleefully. It might not have been seemly for the queen to burst into tears, but no one was seeing it anyway, since Ludo—who was somehow larger than she remembered—enfolded her in a hug that also encompassed the fox-knight. “Sarah back!” he rumbled happily. 

“Yeah, uh, we kinda missed ya,” Hoggle admitted, scuffing his feet, and Sarah flung a hand out to him, drawing him in as well. 

She had to hug and kiss all of them, Hoggle grumbling and making quite a show of her attention even as he didn’t move away, and Sarah only laughed when a random goblin got in the mix of things. After several minutes, Jareth said in bored tones, “If you’re through mauling her…”

That roused Sir Didymus’ outrage. “Sire! After spending days imprisoned in the dungeons, surely we have a right to celebrate her return and our freedom?”

It took a moment before his words permeated Sarah’s fog of happiness. Imprisoned? He had locked them up during her run. The newly-named Goblin Queen whirled to confront the king with both her brows raised in disbelief, the residue of her tears still shining on her cheeks. “You did  _what?”_

“ _Protective custody,_ ” Jareth spat, glaring at the fox-knight. “ _Prisoners_ do not get _linens_ , as I explained earlier. And it was not even two days. Now if you wish to experience _imprisonment_ , Sir Didymus, do continue to defy me.”

“ _Jareth_ ,” Sarah warned, and it was his turn to arch a brow at her. Only then did she notice the goblins sitting up in rings a dozen deep around them, watching attentively. Perhaps yelling at the king in front of all his subjects wasn’t the best idea. So she moderated her tone—a little. “And _why_ , may I ask, were my allies in ‘protective custody’?”

“You saw the Labyrinth,” he grumbled. “I would not send them into it. Pray tell your dear friends all about your adventures before you gainsay me.”

She wanted to deny that … but couldn’t. She could’ve hurt them, all of them, either with her unbelief or with the monsters she’d summoned. “No. No, you have a point, Jareth. You have a point.” Sarah sighed, her eyes moving from Didymus to Hoggle to Ludo, smiling sadly. “As much as I hate to say it, and as much as I wanted all of you there, I wasn’t safe. This run was different and I might have done awful things to you in the place my mind was in. I couldn’t have dealt with that.”

Now her sharp glance came back to Jareth and her look was more than a little accusing. “We both know that there were better ways you could’ve done that, though.”

“Really? And I suppose _you_ would have a better method of preventing Sir Didymus from charging off into terrible danger at the expense of his own life?” Jareth scoffed. “I look forward to your instruction on that topic, milady.”

Sarah couldn’t bear to imagine Didymus flinging himself at the creature in the junkyard. That thing’s poisonous vapors were bad enough, but she  _never_ wanted to see the same wounded heartbreak in his eyes that she’d felt when it mocked her with the voices of everyone she loved. It cost her pride to do it, but it was the second time in as many minutes that he had called her on herself. “All right, fine, I might not approve of the way it was done, but your heart was in the right place. At least they were safe.” she muttered. 

“I resent the implication that I would lose my life in such a wager,” the fox-knight proclaimed, and Sarah and Jareth just shared a _look_. Sir Didymus’ valor was legendary … as was his complete inability to calculate risk. Luckily, he wasn’t inclined to belabor the point. 

A goblin shoved its way through the throng, and clumped to a salute in front of the king. “Kitchen sez prep’rations fer the feast is unnerway, Majesty,” it said.

Every ear in the vicinity perked up. “Feast?” a couple dozen goblins echoed.

“A celebratory feast to honor our Queen and Champion,” Jareth said. A wave of excited chattering met that, until he added, “And _no_ , there will _not_ be any owl wine served.”

“You set up a feast in advance?” Sarah questioned, then considered his last statement with a wrinkle of her nose. “Wait, do I even want to know what the heck owl wine is? Please tell me it isn’t want it sounds like.”

“It’s made from pressed owls. You _truly_ do not want to know,” Jareth told her. Word of the feast was dispersing the goblins, and he drew her a little further away from them—and her allies, though the latter trailed them. “In any case, I knew a feast would be necessary after today’s events. If you chose to stay, it would be a celebration. If not, I would invent some obscure holiday.”

He spoke lightly, but didn’t meet her eyes. Sarah could guess that meant he’d been more worried about today’s outcome than Jareth dared admit, even to himself. So it was with regret that she told him, “Oh, Jareth, I can’t stay for a feast. I’ve got to get Lucy back. Her family’s already worried sick. They need her home; it’s already been at least half a day-”

That provoked an indulgent chuckle. “She is already returned. Did you not see me cast two spells on our way down here? One freed your friends, the other gave the order for the goblins to take your Lucy back to her home.”

Sarah blinked, trying to process that. After everything she’d gone through, she’d never actually laid eyes on Lucy here; the little girl was back home, and she hadn’t even known it. “Wait—how are her parents going to deal with this? How are the  _police_ going to deal with this? Jareth, I had a detective asking about her case. I need to get back up there and take care of things.” She cut him a look, then, and added, “You  _did_ say it was still possible for me to go back. I know it’s got to be complicated and there have to be rules, but-”

Jareth put an arm around her with a sigh. “Sarah. Have patience. You are not needed Above just yet.”

Worrying her lower lip, Sarah frowned. Even now, her responsibilities ate at her. “But Lucy … God, that’s gonna cause  _so_ many questions. My cell phone is probably blowing up as we speak. Biggest question is, what’s she going to tell them? Everyone’s been looking for her. I can’t chance anyone finding out that she was here. They can’t even know there _is_ a  _here_ .”

Jareth drew a crystal from thin air and held it up. In its depths, she saw a fairly dirty and rumpled Lucy come padding into her parents’ home while the detectives were interviewing them for what must’ve felt like the dozenth time. She saw the Merritts fall to their knees and sweep up their youngest daughter, crying and laughing. She saw Alli crying, too, kissing Lucy’s tousled hair.

Jareth spoke calmly. “As for what she tells them, it hardly matters. If a child that age says she spent the last day Underground, playing with strange creatures, the police and her parents will invent a tale that fits what they think the facts are. I imagine a great many basements in the area will be searched.”

“Alli knows the truth,” Sarah murmured, mind still racing.

“She has better sense than to insist to the police that it was her fault the goblins took her sister. If she does, it will be dismissed as an invention of her guilt for not watching the girl more closely. So long as _you_ don’t go reminding her, in a year she’ll have buried the whole incident far from her conscious mind.”

Sarah had to take a deep breath. It was done, it was over, and for once there wasn’t some sort of grisly psychological mess for her to clean up. For once, she was free to do exactly and only as she pleased. Except…

“We’ve got to talk about this, Jareth. I’ve got to be in at work tomorrow,” she said, her own voice sounding faraway. “I left early, and after all this, there’ll be paperwork. I’m going to need to talk to the police.”

Jareth looked at her with a mixture of chiding and amusement. “Night is falling Aboveground, and time runs differently here than there. Spend tonight and tomorrow here, and you will still return in time to be at your job at your customary hour.”

Her allies had caught up to them by then, and Ludo placed a massive paw on her shoulder. “Sarah stay?” he asked, a world of sorrow in his tone.

Enough. For the moment, for the next twenty-six of the Labyrinth’s hours, she would stay. All of the messy details of what she’d sworn and what the ramifications were could be discussed in a few of those hours. Now was the time to discover who and what she’d come. She put her hand over Ludo’s, and smiled at the night-troll. “Yes. This time, Sarah is going to stay.” She looked at Jareth then, and knew worry showed in her gaze. “Though I have this feeling like my life is about to become damned complicated…”

“I’m sure you’ll sort it out,” Jareth said. “That is rather your talent, is it not? And remember, you now have magic on your side. That goes a long way to accomplish things.”

With that, at last, Sarah let herself really accept that she’d won—not just a child’s freedom, but her old friends, plus a king and a kingdom as well. All for her very own. And, more than even that, she has won back herself. Herself as a whole. Her sigh of relief felt like years of tension finally being relaxed.

Eyes traveling across the room and the faces surrounding her, Sarah’s face lit up in a smile. The thought occurred to her suddenly then. She really was a woman of both worlds. She was meant to be here. Had always been. And already, it felt different. Somehow, now, the Labyrinth, Umardelin, they felt like home.

 


	29. Unforeseen Revelations

Sarah and Jareth were soon seated at the head of a high table, flanked by her friends and a few fae he introduced as councilors. The wise man was among them, and he shook Sarah’s hand gravely before sitting down at Jareth’s side. Much to her relief, his hat was a live and talkative thing again. “The champion returned!” it crowed. 

“Hush, you,” the wise man grumbled, and his rheumy eyes fixed on Sarah. “So the woman chose at last. We welcome you, Champion.”

“Yes, yes, welcome!” chirped the hat.

Sarah couldn’t hold back a grin at that. Instinctively, she felt herself drop into the curtsy that she had learned to perfect at pains as a child. Thinking back, it was a little too ironic to think about the hours she had practiced court gestures out of books in her play. It was almost eerie to think of, now. “I’m honored. It was not exactly an easy road.”

“And Queen, as well.” Jareth said, tapped his crop against his boot impatiently.

“The Labyrinth chose its champion and its queen,” the old man said. “Have the goblins truly accepted her as such?”

“Oh yes,” Jareth said with a droll grin. At the lower tables, the goblins were drinking dozens of toasts to Sarah, some of which ended with ‘or she’ll make us go splodey!’ in apparent good cheer.

Sarah mostly lost herself to observing the goblins antics, shaking her head in amused disbelief while the men spoke as if she wasn’t here. Which, honestly, was a relief at the moment. There was only so much of being the center of attention one could handle. That she still did have an ear cocked in their direction, thought went without saying. “She must have a crown,” the hat put in, and the old man glowered at it.

“There will be a coronation,” Jareth said. “Soon. Give her time, good sir. Yesterday she half disbelieved this place existed.”

“Of course, of course,” he muttered. “Soon, though, sire. You remember King Thydus, I trust.”

“I have not forgotten,” Jareth said forebodingly.

That piqued Sarah’s interest, her green eyes turning back toward them; the wise man had said that name before. “Who was King Thydus?”

“My predecessor,” Jareth said, in tones that suggested further inquiry would be unwelcome.

“Thydus the Unworthy,” the wise man said. “He was not king for very long.”

“Really? What happened to him?” Sarah asked with a curious arch of her brow, ignoring Jareth’s expression.

The wise man seemed to be searching for a diplomatic response, but the hat cut in. “Goblins ate him,” it chirruped.

Sarah couldn’t help looking toward the low tables again then, where the goblins were – it must be said – attacking the feast. Jareth had warned her of their appalling lack of table manners, and even at this distance she could hear squabbling over the best cuts of meat, along with the occasional cutlery-rattling belch.

Jareth sighed in annoyance. “He was cursed to rule here some years before me. He failed to command the obedience of his subjects, however. When they ceased to believe he could rule them, they turned on him.” He gave another brooding glance to the goblins below, two of whom were tussling over a particularly shiny fork. “But that will _not_ happen to you, Queen Sarai. As my wise man said, the Labyrinth itself has claimed you. And you have quite impressed the goblins.”

“Besides, my lady, you have _us_ at your side,” Sir Didymus said from beside her. He’d gotten through an astonishing amount of roast – though Sarah suspected some of it was going under the table, to his loyal steed. “ My brothers-in-arms and I will not allow any harm to come to you. Why, I dare—”

His voice cut off with a wave of Jareth’s hand. “No, good knight. A dare is something which, like fleeing prey, the goblins cannot resist. Be at peace. We will make arrangements for Sarah’s coronation soon, as her schedule allows…” He gave her an indulgent look at that, mouth quirking up into a smile of affection. “And until that time, I have it in mind to cement her authority somewhat.”

With those words he rose. At first the goblins didn’t notice their king had stood up, but gradually some of them caught sight of him, and went still. A wave of respectful silence slowly blanketed the lower tables, broken only by the occasional fidgeting.

A cold nose pressed against Sarah’s knuckles, and she slipped Ambrosius a bite of her roast, suddenly feeling too nervous to eat. Just what did Jareth have in mind?

“Citizens of Umardelin,” Jareth said in a carrying voice. “On this night, we celebrate the return of our Champion, Sarai, she who is to be crowned Queen and who shall rule at my side. In honor of her valiant heart, and of her achievement, we grant her this.”

A gesture, and there was a necklace in his hands, strung from chips of crystal that sparkled both dark and light, like bits of starry night sky interspersed with pieces of one of his seeing-globes. The pendant was a great silver key, ornately wrought, and the goblins gave a collective gasp.

Jareth moved to stand behind her chair, and the key was warm against her skin as he fastened it around her neck. “The key to the kingdom,” Jareth said, and the goblins burst into a roaring cry of “Long live the Queen!”

“A little warning would’ve been nice,” Sarah murmured, her hand automatically going to the key. It sent a little frisson of magic through her fingertips when she touched it, and she had the odd sensation of … almost something like a phantom limb, but much larger. As if she had a whole other body, vast and only dimly sensed, and yet containing her actual self as if a bright spark of warmth in the broader self. “Jareth, what…?”

He looked at her with interest as he sat down. “Do you sense it?”

Didymus added, sounding concerned, “My lady … your eyes are glowing golden.”

“Sense _what_?” Sarah asked, but she knew. It was her secret heart, so carefully guarded, lapped in layers of misdirection and defense. It was everything she had denied even to herself, coming to life again in a rich fullness her teenage self could never have imagined. It was the Labyrinth, her realm, her home. And with that key under her fingertips, she could feel every inch of it as if it were part of herself.

The wise man was right; the Labyrinth had chosen her. It was part of her, and she was part of it.

Her breath came a little faster then, Sarah feeling almost as if she might get lost. This new sense was so much  _bigger_ than anything she’d ever been aware of. It reminded her of being a little kid swimming at the beach, feeling the immensity of the ocean currents around her.

Jareth put his hand over hers, gently moving it away from the key, and it was as if he’d broken an electrical current. She snapped back to herself, to the body she’d grown up in, and she blinked at him rapidly as the golden haze cleared from her vision. “What the hell just happened?” she asked shakily.

“Something unexpected,” Jareth said, musing. “The land truly _has_ chosen you. I was better than a year in this realm before she opened to me as she just did to you.”

Sarah managed to take a deep breath, and touched the key again. The awareness was there again, but she didn’t feel lost in it. She moved her hand away, noticing that everyone at the high table was watching her intently. Even the wise man’s hat was silent for once. “Okay, that’s… Jareth, any clue why it would do that?”

“Mayhap you have a little fae blood in you,” he mused. “Many mortals do, particularly those of an artistic temperament. It would explain your affinity for magic.”

Trying to regain her composure, she picked up a roll from the table, but had no appetite, so she slipped it under the table to the waiting Ambrosius. “And the whole thing with my eyes? I remember when the goblins attacked, it felt like I was seeing everything though gold glitter.”

“The sheen of my power is iridescence,” Jareth explained. “Yours, evidently, is golden. Forgive me, Sarah. Had I known the key would resonate with you so strongly, I would have presented it under more contemplative circumstances.”

As he spoke, two goblins at the closest table were trying to outdo one another in a competition to see who could fit the most plums in their mouth at the same time. The results so far were messy, and Sarah chuckled. “All right. You win points for apologizing before I told you to. But seriously, Jareth, a little warning next time?”

“I promise you shall have adequate warning before your coronation, and our betrothal, and our wedding,” Jareth said.

Hoggle made a disgusted noise, the wise man harrumphed, and Didymus looked surprised. Even Ludo looked around, and he had been thoroughly absorbed in a course of some sort of purple vegetable stewed with mushrooms.

Sarah held her hand up like she was trying to stop traffic … and at the moment she  _did_ feel rather like she was about to be run over. “Whoa there. Just … give that some time, okay, Your Majesty? We need to talk about all of that, and not here. Or now.”

He gave an aggrieved sigh, and the wise man added, “Did you not tell me to give her time to adjust, sire?”

“Thank you,” Sarah pointed out. Ambrosius was nudging her hand again, and she slipped him another roll.

Jareth scowled. “We will discuss it. And soon. You did say you would stay with me  _forever_ , Sarah, and I would have you at my side forever and a day.”

She leaned back in her seat and looked at him with exasperation. “Didn’t you just remind the wise man that yesterday, I didn’t believe in any of this? Give me a day to adjust, for God’s sake.”

“Not for the sake of any god, but for your own,” Jareth said at last. “Well have I learned the peril of trying to goad you before you are quite ready.”

“Don’t let your feathers get ruffled,” she muttered. “This whole I-can-do-magic thing is going to take a while to handle, too.”

Ambrosius picked that moment to start licking her fingers, and Sarah yanked her hand back. “Augh! Didymus, tell Ambrosius not to lick my hand. I’m still trying to eat, here.”

The fox-knight cocked his head at her, evidently glad of a change of topic but still bemused. “My lady? Ambrosius is as my side, as ever.”

She looked over, and sure enough the sheepdog was sitting on his master’s other side, giving a low whine at her accusatory look. “If he’s over there, then what…”

Suddenly she didn’t want to know what she’d been feeding under the table, but there was really only one answer, revealed when Jareth barked a word that sparkled with magic. Unseen hands hauled a scrabbling goblin out from under the tablecloth, and Jareth grabbed it by the tail before flinging it toward the lower tables.

“ _Jareth!”_ Sarah yelped. “We do not throw the goblins, what is _wrong_ with you?”

He just gave her a look. “We only set off magic bombs in the center of a group of them, is that it? Do not fear, Sarah. Goblins bounce. And they are quite accustomed to being thrown, tossed, or kicked when they misbehave.”

“I didn’t mean to actually blow them up, one, and two, they were _biting_ me at the time,” she shot back. “That’s a little different than licking my hand!”

“They are not permitted at or under the high table, for precisely that reason,” Jareth said. “Look, my Sarai. He is quite well. He landed in the gravy boat.” A glance in that direction, and he added, “Which he is now endeavoring to drink.”

She cradled her head in her palms. “Oh, Jareth. Like that’s any better. Add ‘methods of goblin management’ to the list of discussions you and I need to have…”

 


	30. Down in the Underground

After the conclusion of the feast, Jareth guided Sarah back upstairs. She was somewhat surprised to learn that the room they’d wrecked in their final confrontation was not, in fact, his bedroom. He showed her to his actual chambers, and he caught her smirking at the sight of the royal blue sheets on his bed. But another feature of the room interested her more. “You have a conversation pit?” she asked, strolling around the circular depression in the floor that echoed the one down in the throne room. This version was filled with cushions and a few blankets.

“I am, at least some of the time, a bird,” Jareth reminded her, forgoing the more complicated aspects of that explanation. “A nest is quite comfortable.”

That made her smile, and her smile made him draw her into his arms and kiss her, and for a time they reveled in the simple joy of kissing. Sarah drew back at last, tucking her face under his chin with a happy sigh.

Jareth echoed it, and added, “It is customary for a lady to have her own rooms, for dressing and whatnot, and I shall see to it that you are provided with such. However, I would be delighted if you would consider my bedchamber, and my cushion pit, to be your own as well, for as long as we both shall live.”

“Hush with the happily-ever-after stuff, you,” Sarah scolded gently, but she kissed him again, and again, and then drew him down into the cushions with her. Jareth was, of course, very happy to reaffirm his love for her, and to give her more reasons to want to stay at his side.

It was a great improvement over the ridiculous lecture he’d expected to receive regarding his supposed cruelty to the goblins. He knew Sarah well enough to know that she _would_ voice her opinion, sooner or later, and he supposed her ideas of treated them more maternally might have some merit. Though only because he would remain the stern disciplinarian – the goblins could love their Queen, so long as they remembered to fear their King. He’d seen the result of them losing their fear, all too clearly.

Sarah apparently found the cushions quite comfortable, because she dozed off to sleep shortly afterward. Jareth lay beside her for a time, stroking her crow-black hair and quietly reveling in her presence here. Her beauty was just as glorious in repose, and that Sarah – stubborn, suspicious Sarah – chose to sleep here beside him showed a world of trust. She’d drifted off curled up against his chest, but after a while he gently moved her aside and rose. Summoning clothes to his body with an unconscious use of magic, he strolled out of the room.

Several long corridors and winding stairs later, Jareth came to a small room at the top of the castle’s other tower. It was simply furnished with tapestries on the walls, and a large plinth in the center of the room, on which rested a clear crystal globe. Unlike the seeing crystals he used regularly, this one was nearly the size of a man’s head. It glowed softly, pulsing in slow cycles. Jareth approached, and taking a deep breath, placed his hand upon it.

An image swam into view within the crystal depths: a man’s bearded visage, one Jareth knew well. King Deruthiel of Etaron had more silver in his temples than when Jareth had last seen him, more years ago than he cared to count. Once he had counted those years, even those months and weeks, but that time was long past.

“Took you long enough to answer the summons,” Deruthiel groused, and that gruff tone was as familiar as his face. Jareth couldn’t help a small smile. Time had shown him from whence his own preference for displaying anger, rather than concern, had come.

“I had pressing business, Father,” he said. “I answered as soon as I could. I trust you know what has happened?”

“The curse is broken,” Deruthiel said. “We felt the reverberations throughout Etaron. The castle lost some roof tiles, and the spring house fell down. The damage was not so great in the village, however, your mother is off consoling the small folk. Some of them thought the High King’s men were invading.”

He did not say _again_ , for which Jareth was grateful. That long-ago day, when the prank dreamed up by his clique had gone so dreadfully wrong and required so much magic to right, he had believed for a while that he’d gotten away with it. That there would be no repercussions for his crime. He’d gone out hunting as usual, and felt the intrusive magic of a greater power come to their realm. When Jareth returned to the castle, the High King’s men were there with a proclamation of judgment.

His father was no great mage, unlike Jareth’s mother, and had to be leant the power to cast the curse of banishment. There had been no time to beg forgiveness, nor would Jareth’s pride even at that tenderer age have allowed it. No time even to hope for intercession from his grandmother, a greater sorceress than either parent; even in the midst of youthful hubris he’d understood that he had brought this doom upon himself. He had stood brave beneath the curse, and only when the beast of voices spoke those old words to him had he protested.

Exiled to Umardelin with nothing more than his wits, his magic, and the clothes upon his back, the decades that followed had been dark ones for Jareth, and he did not like to remember them. He tipped his head to acknowledge his father’s courtesy. “Let them know that such a disastrous event is unlikely to occur, at least upon my account.”

“I should hope you’d have learned better by now,” Deruthiel grumbled. And then he asked, “When are you coming home?”

Jareth blinked in surprise. “Father, at this time, with Umardelin’s queen yet to be crowned, it would be unwise of me to leave for a visit to Etaron.”

“You intend to _remain_ in that goblin-infested pit?” Deruthiel said, just as startled.

“Umardelin is my home,” was the swift retort, unthinking and true.

Deruthiel scoffed. “Umardelin is a curse, nothing more.”

Jareth’s chin came up, and his eyes blazed. When he spoke, it was not with the voice of Prince Jareth, son of Deruthiel, but with the voice of Jareth King of Umardelin and Master of the Labyrinth. “Speak not so of my realm, King of Etaron.”

His father seemed taken aback by the defiance, but before he could respond, another did. “Hush, ‘Thiel. The last thing we need is another argument.” The scolding words were accompanied by an elbow applied to Deruthiel’s side, and he moved away muttering under his breath about the impudence of women. That sort of gentle squabbling between his parents was as much a feature of their love as competitiveness was between himself and Sarah, and as familiar and comforting to Jareth as Karen and Robert’s half-playful arguments about whose turn it was to walk the dog.

The face of Jareth’s mother filled the viewing crystal then, and Cadelinyth smiled warmly at her son. “So you are free, my son. And by the sound of your quarrel, you intend to remain Umardelin’s king?”

He returned the smile. Like any young creature, Jareth had had struggles in his relationship with his parents, but Cadelinyth had always seemed to understand him a little better than Deruthiel. His whimsical humor came from her, as did his looks; she was fair while Deruthiel was dark, and Jareth had her more graceful build.

“The kingdom has accepted my love, Sarah, as its Champion and Queen,” he told her. “If I wish to retain my rank, and to keep Sarah as well, then I am bound to Umardelin. It is … a difficult land, but not an unworthy one.”

“And not one that can be ruled by one who despises it,” Cadelinyth said shrewdly. “I am proud of you, son, that you have so thoroughly overcome the curse placed upon you. Few in your position would ever rise to such triumph.”

He would never admit such to his father, or to any other fae, but before his mother Jareth had to be honest. “Much of the credit is due to Sarah,” he said, glancing down like a unruly boy he’d once been. “If not for her…”

If he had not won her in the end, if she had not trusted him enough to chose him and offer her own self in place of the girl, then what would his future have been? Not long, Jareth suspected. Defiance had carried him a long way, and falling in love with Sarah had sustained him further. But if he had lost her, if he had seen all eternity stretching away without her at his side, knowing that any further attempt to bring her back to the Labyrinth would likely either kill her or drive her mad … then in despair and ennui he would certainly have made a mistake like unto Thydus before him. And when they gnawed the flesh from his bones, he might have been glad of the release from a life condemned to rule alone.

“This is the same Sarah who won back her little brother and defeated you, is she not?” Cadelinyth asked, and when he nodded agreement, she chuckled. “So you share your father’s taste for a woman who is your equal, and quite capable of outwitting you at your own game. Congratulations, my son. I’m certain she will make your life very interesting.”

Spluttering protest from his father could barely be heard, but Jareth knew their story and could only shrug, chagrined. “I cannot deny it,” he said. “Mother, you will adore her.”

“I’m certain of it,” she agreed, eyes sparkling. “If I must share my only child’s heart with any woman, she had best be an exemplary individual, and one whom I too can love.”

Deruthiel scoffed again, and Cadelinyth elbowed him again. “Enough, ‘Thiel. Mother  _did_ forgive you.”

Faintly, Jareth heard his father say, “Your mother would have gladly boiled me in oil, had you not fallen in love with me.”

“You _are_ a lucky man, to have my love,” Cadelinyth said playfully, then returned her attention to Jareth. “Dare I presume that we are invited to your Sarah’s coronation? It will take two weeks or so to make our plans and travel to Umardelin.”

“Of course you are both welcome,” Jareth said, and again heard his father grouse about their boots stinking of goblins. He bristled, but when Cadelinyth rolled her eyes, he could only laugh. “I will consider it my personal mission to make Father appreciate this place.”

“You never did take on simple challenges,” his mother sighed. They shared a look of understanding; the goblins were often considered the lowest of low fae, despised by many other fae races, yet also feared by them. Goblins, after all, were immune to iron. It was considered very fortunate that they were not especially ambitious or intelligent.

With a crafty king to lead them, however, and a cunning queen versed in all the human arts of war … Jareth could understand why the rest of the fae would be concerned.

Cadelinyth turned her head at some sound Jareth couldn’t hear, evidently a summons. “Son, we must go,” she said, returning her attention to him. “I look forward to seeing you, and your soon-to-be queen as well.”

“I look forward to hosting you both,” Jareth told her.

“I love you, son.” Cadelinyth smiled, kissed the tips of her first two fingers, and placed them against the crystal on her side.

Jareth’s breath caught a little, and he kissed his fingertips, placing them against the cool crystal where hers were. It was an old gesture between them, from the time in his long-ago boyhood when Jareth hadn’t wanted to be made much of by his mother, and recalled those days of innocence powerfully. “I love you, Mother. And you, Father.” Deruthiel was not a man to speak such sentiments easily, but Jareth heard the reply anyway.

“We’ll be in touch once our travel plans are set,” Cadelinyth said, and darkened the crystal.

Jareth drew back thoughtfully. He had much to do before his parents arrived … starting with explaining to Sarah that they would be visiting. That could wait a day or two, however.

 


	31. A Dream Within a Dream

The fairy-tale was over and all was lost. The castle and the Labyrinth dissolved around her in a tumble of broken rock and faintly glittering dust. Sarah was in the midst of it, terrified and confused, crying out for Jareth, for her allies, for herself and the life that lay shattered behind her. There was only this void, a child’s dream emptied of its magic with only the grit and grime of reality left to it. The tatters of a shoddy fantasy flickered around her as Sarah fought desperately for _something_ , some spark she’d lost long ago.

Again, utterly distraught, she screamed his name. He had been lost to her sight when it all began, separated before they even knew they’d be torn apart.“What’s happening?! This isn’t right, this isn’t _**right** _ _!_ It can’t all end like this,” she moaned, falling to her knees in the gloom, knowing herself alone and bereft of all hope. “I  _won’t_ let it end like this!”

Now even the nothingness trembled beneath her, the Underground making itself very clear how it felt about that pronouncement, and Sarah cringed as her very body began to shake…

The scream was trickling up her throat, icy sweat breaking out on the back of her neck. What had she done? Sarah had only done what was right, only done it to send Lucy home. She’d never meant this, nothing like this. Before she was ready, the ground bucked beneath her, balance lost in the growing darkness. Sarah lashed out at the first solid thing she felt, striking with a clumsy fist and then gripping, hanging on, needing to clutch  _something_ close as the world collapsed beneath her. Some poor animal was making tortured groaning cries, and Sarah realized it was her, her screams of fear and frustration muffled by sleep. Dream, another dream. She was waking up, afraid to do so, afraid she would see her plain white bedroom ceiling and know the Labyrinth was just a dream she should’ve put away with the rest of her childhood.

“Ow,” Jareth muttered, wincing as he felt his jaw. “I wake you from whatever dream has you making unearthly sounds, and the only thanks I receive is a brisk clip across the face? You are quite welcome, Sarah, love.”

Slowly, at the sound of his voice, she dared to open eyes already watering. Her chest shuddered when his mismatched eyes met her own. For a moment, she could only blink at him with haunted eyes, just studying his face as the shakes took over her body. He was real, the peevish expression on his face wasn’t one she’d ever imagined, Jareth the Goblin King was real and snuggled down beside her in the cushion pit.

Only the did Sarah, in a moment very unlike her usual self, burst into tears, clutching his shirt while she bawled like a frightened child. Jareth’s surprise was palpable, but he held her and stroked her hair and told her everything was well until the short-lived flood dried up. At last he asked, “Nightmare?”

She nodded, still holding tight to his shirt, not letting go for fear he might vanish as everything else had in her dream. She’d,  _they’d_ , come too far for her to even consider that possibility again. Huddled in his arms, she just let herself breathe him in, willing her nerves to settle. Even now, she couldn’t release herself from the terrible foreboding in that dream. Few things in recent years had scared her more than the undercurrent in final moments of that dream. At last, her voice rusty from crying, Sarah managed to ask, “Jareth … what would’ve happened if I’d … if I’d said the words?”

He went very, very still, and for a moment there was no expression at all in his eyes when she pulled back from him slightly and glanced up into them. They could have been painted glass, for all the life in them. And then a deep wariness swam up in them, and he spoke slowly and carefully. “For you, nothing untoward. You would have gone back to your real life having rescued the girl. Eventually you would have forgotten this place, and me.”

“And you?” Sarah asked softly, gently stroking the curve of his chin with her thumb and forefinger, knowing he was deliberately avoiding that answer. Needing to know, anyway. “What would have happened to you, Jareth?”

Jareth sighed, his breath stirring her hair. “It has been several centuries, that I have ruled Umardelin. At first, I tried to break the curse myself. But it is not real love, if all you want from someone is what they can do for you, and so the curse remained. Eventually I gave up, and descended into apathy, though I had sufficient self-preservation to keep my subjects in line. I thought the curse was unending, that there was no point in hoping for it to break. I resigned myself to my fate.

“Then _you_ arrived. Runners had become rare, in the current age, so when I felt someone read the book with belief, I went to find you. I heard you reading in the park, and when you saw me as the owl, you read to _me_. I thought you would be an amusing diversion.”

Jareth laughed softly. “Little did I know, you were bolder and braver than most, and as stubborn as I am. You had the most belief I’d seen in decades, and unlike the rest, you were running on determination, not pure terror. When I brought you into your dream of the ballroom, I was further amused to see the romantic light in which you’d cast me. You should not have been able to shatter that spell, Sarah. And when you did, I knew I was lost.”

“Yeah, that spell had a lot to do with me deciding to wreck your world before I was done,” Sarah muttered. He was taking the long way around to answer her question, but she didn’t mind. It was interesting to see through his eyes, with no veil of obfuscation left.

“Your run ended at the castle doors,” Jareth informed her. “For any other runner, they would find their lost child in the throne room. Most were happy to take their child and flee without ever confronting me, without reciting those lines. But I was intrigued by you, and you were not finished with me.”

“And this is why Alli never saw you,” Sarah mused. “I _thought_ that not everyone got the glitterstorm.”

“It varies, from runner to runner,” he admitted. “And I followed you closely, testing you, trying to see where your courage would fail. Instead you became more determined and defiant. And at the end, when you confronted me, it was not enough for you to take Toby and leave. You had to face me, and despite my plea, you broke my power.”

“I think we both knew that it was far more complicated than that,” Sarah demurred.

“I am summarizing,” Jareth said, with great dignity. “I thought then that you might be the answer to my curse.”

She leaned back a little, and looked at him steadily. “Do you have any idea that I got home, you flew off, and I ended up kinda maybe crying a little bit, and not knowing completely why? Maybe because I’d gotten a little too involved? You’re not the only one the ballroom wrecked, Jareth.”

“I know,” he said. “And I knew beyond any doubt that I loved you, and that you were the one foretold, when you reappeared in the Labyrinth. Did you ever realize, Sarah, that no other runner has been able to do that? Yet whenever you sensed me approaching – something else no other has been able to do – you fled. I could only reach you when your dreams took on a different tone.”

Sarah gave him a wry grin, and muttered, “Somebody once said that adulthood is when you stop being scared of the villains, and start wanting to sleep with them.”

“I am not a villain,” Jareth said. “In any case, all of this is to say that _no one else_ could have broken the curse. And once I was certain of that, once I knew that there _was_ hope and I had squandered it, if I had lost you … if I had lost you forever…” Jareth trailed off, looking away.

She said his name, softly, and he looked at her. “Two years after you set that barrier between us and ended even the dreams, there was an uprising in the realm. I had been … distracted. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to forget you. I neglected to celebrate one of the goblin holidays, and they stormed the castle.”

“Holy shit,” Sarah muttered.

“Luckily I was able to convince them that the calendars were wrong, and the celebration was _that_ night instead of the prior one, and expended a grievous amount of magic seeing that it was properly observed despite a complete lack of preparation.” Jareth scoffed at himself, while Sarah stared at him in horror. “In time, I think I would have made an error from which I could not recover. Which would have been _my_ fault, for so antagonizing you during your first run. In my defense, all I can say is that after a couple of centuries here, one can be expected to go a bit mad.”

“Well, then I’m glad to be your return to sanity,” she said, and grinned in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Or as close as you get, anyway.” Despite the frivolous words, Sarah pulled him close and hugged him tight, aware of how close they’d both come to losing. If she’d known all of that … but she might not have believed it, the way things stood when she first arrived, and he couldn’t speak of the curse until it was broken. Which was a very neat way of screwing over the person under the curse, she thought.

Speaking of the curse… “Jareth, the one thing you haven’t told me is why you ended up cursed anyway.”

He looked quite pained. “I trust you are familiar with the Shakespearean play,  _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ ?”

“Holy shit, Jareth.” The possible combination of that particular play and its connections, not exactly flattering ones, to the fae, to the man before left her wide-eyed. If he had had any hand in that, it was no wonder he was here. “Please don’t tell me it was _you_ that gave him the idea!”

Jareth looked askance at her. “I am not quite _that_ old, Sarah. It was still fairly popular in my youth, despite the way it portrays Titania. Some friends and I had the brilliant idea to attend a performance of said play, and found ourselves dissatisfied with the human actors. So … we enchanted them to sleep and took their places. Using fae glamour and various other magics.” Jareth managed to look sheepish, and added, “We ad-libbed, perhaps too much. And since we had all been imbibing rather freely before this brilliant decision was made, the magic used grew ever more impossible to disguise as stage effects.”

For a long moment, Sarah could only blink and stare. “I remember there being a lot of theories in the books about ‘real’ fae over whether or not there’s a real Oberon or Titania. Regardless, let me guess – that didn’t go over too well with the higher-ups.”

“Those are not their names, but we do have a High King and High Queen, and to say it did not go over well is putting it too lightly,” Jareth said dryly. “The friend who portrayed Titania, by enchanting himself into the form of a woman, as well as the one who’d been Oberon, were stripped of their magic and turned into a toads for a hundred years by the curse levied on them. The others were turned into asses for a century, and set to work in the High King’s stables. I got away lightly, by comparison, because I’d played Puck, and it was demonstrably not my idea.”

Sarah had curled a hand over her mouth in disbelief, wincing at this last. “I’d say that was severe, but … wow. That was … was pretty gutsy. And stupid. Considering what you are and who they are. Holy shit, Jareth. Just  _wow_ .” She couldn’t help shaking her head in awe of their daring. “I wonder if they expected you to come out of this in one piece. I would argue the severity, really.”

He looked rueful. “My sentence gave me the opportunity to survive, if I were as cunning as Puck. And yet, since I’d made mock of love, they made love the limiting factor in my sentence, rather than mere years. I was of royal blood, and though I did not think of it at the time, my mother’s mother is of even higher lineage. Her influence may have been part of the reason why the severity of my punishment depended so much on my own resources. In any event, I most assuredly learned not to do anything so foolish again. And so did my companions – those who survived, at any rate.”

Sarah found herself stunned by that. At last she managed to say, “Okay. Just … remind me not to step wrong where they’re concerned, okay? Wow.”

“I doubt very much that we will have anything to do with them,” Jareth said. “The High King and Queen are very old, very powerful, and very unconcerned about any of the kingdoms that do not cause trouble. Umardelin pays them a tithe, makes no gestures toward rebellion, and is safely ignored.”

“Sounds like that’s for the best,” Sarah sighed.

“With all of that established, love, whatever did you dream to make you upset?”

So she told him, the nightmare of loss even now bringing a shadow to her eyes. Jareth gathered her close again and kissed her temple. “Never. The realm shuddered when I came too close to mentioning the terms of the curse, but it would not have been destroyed even if I had spoken openly of it.  _ I _ might have been, in which case I suppose you would rule Umardelin in my stead. Your swift choice saw us arrive at the best of all possible solutions.” Jareth laughed a little, and looked at her with a teasing light in his eyes. “Unless, of course, you truly meant to take over my kingdom?”

Sarah scoffed. “I’ve got news for you, I might’ve wanted to kick your ass, but I don’t want to steal your kingdom.”

“No, based upon on the evidence, you want _me_ , and very much so,” Jareth said with a grin. Sarah swatted his shoulder, which turned into a brief bout of play-wrestling that ended predictably. At least Sarah went back to sleep with a smile on her lips, instead of worrying about what might have been.

 


	32. There And So-Nearly Back Again

The next morning, after a sumptuous breakfast, Sarah set out to explore the Labyrinth. Jareth had pressing kingly business to take care of, but he allowed her to go in the company of two of his bravest knights: Sir Didymus and Ludo. That provision had Sarah rolling her eyes, but the memory of the beast of voices was enough to quell her protests before she even spoke them.

The fox-knight met them at the gates, but they had to pick up Ludo on the way. His home was just outside the castle environs, and Sarah wasn’t surprised to see that it was built entirely of stone, intricately joined with no mortar visible. Didymus rapped on the door. “Come forth, brother!” he called. “Lady Sarah requires our escort!”

A deep rumble from inside, and the door opened. Sarah blinked; the creature before her looked a lot like Ludo, enough that she understood this was another night troll. But this one’s fur was a honey-blonde, its horns were shorter and narrower, and it was slighter than Ludo’s massive bulk – though still huge by human standards. The creature trilled at them, sounding rather like Ludo when he called the rocks.

Sir Didymus swept off his hat and bowed elegantly. “Greetings, milady. And how is young Dymus?”

Sarah blinked. So that was a female night troll … and as she moved aside, Sarah caught her first glimpse of a  _baby_ . She could only blink, bemused, as the red-furred toddler grabbed Sir Didymus – for whom he was named, she realize – in a hug. Considering that Dymus was already as large as a human toddler, the fox-knight was nearly bowled over.

“Friends!” Ludo rumbled, stepping out into the light. He and his wife trilled back and forth to each other for a moment, and Sarah was surprised when Ludo broke the flow of what was obviously their native tongue to say her name. At that, the blonde troll looked at her and gave a beaming smile. Ludo patted her shoulder, looking to Sarah. “Sarah friend. Sarah why Ludo got brother. Now Ludo got wife, too. Ludo got son. Ludo happy.”

“I’m happy for you, Ludo,” Sarah said, and hugged him. “I guess we all really did grow up, didn’t we?” When she stepped out, she couldn’t help but flash a little smile at Dymus. Ludo with a _child_. It simply boggled her mind a little. There were just so many new things here to discover, it seemed. She’d been gone a long time. Longer than she had even considered.

The baby ran and hid behind his mother, peering out at Sarah nervously, and Sir Didymus took that opportunity to dust himself off. “Lady Sarah wishes to tour the Labyrinth. In light of the last run, it would be well for us to see what changes have been made. Will you accompany us?”

“Ludo go,” he said, nodding, and with a hug for his son and one for his wife – including a brief, affectionate lock of their horns – he set out with them.

The castle environs seemed much the same, though the goblin city looked different. Perhaps that was her perspective; these were her subjects now, not a series of enemies to be fought. The inhabitants, instead of attacking, thronged around them. Ludo swayed from foot to foot warily, but the goblins were more interested in Sarah than in him or Didymus.

She knew not to flee, and stood her ground, meeting their gazes boldly. Most seemed to only want a look at her, darting up, staring, and bolting away. Then Sarah felt a weight strike her in the middle of her back, and her clothes being tugged as a goblin climbed up to her shoulder. Didymus bristled, and Ludo turned ponderously to glare, but the goblin only perched there and looked searchingly at Sarah. This one reminded her a lot of certain pygmy monkeys she’d seen at the zoo, all swift movements and tiny clawed paws, with a long tail for balance. “Hello,” she finally said, a bit unnerved despite herself.

“Hi!” the goblin chirped, and jumped down, disappearing into the group. As if that was some kind of signal, the crowd broke apart. Sarah and her knights were able to walk on unmolested, although the three shared an incredulous look before they continued on. _Well, that was unexpected. Maybe take that as a reassuring sign._

The edge of the forest wasn’t quite as Sarah had remembered. She stopped, looking at the treeline but not seeing it. Instead she focused on the weight of the key around her neck, which was growing warmer, and the strange sense of something turning inside her. “My lady?” Sir Didymus asked, sounding worried.

Sarah took a deep breath, and without answering him, she set out toward the edge of the forest. Ludo trailed behind her, and Sir Didymus trotted ahead, both of them watching her anxiously. She didn’t dare stop to answer, entirely focused on what she could feel. Umardelin was trying to tell her something, or show her something, she wasn’t sure which, and trying to work out where ‘she’ actually was inside what felt like a larger version of herself was giving her a headache.

They topped a rise, and Sarah came to a halt, blinking. There before her was the park of her childhood, recreated down to the last blade of grass. She felt a strange doubling, remembering Agnes the junk lady and the facsimile of her bedroom she’d encountered on her first run. This, though, this was something bigger.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember this place,” Sir Didymus fretted. Ludo lifted his shaggy head and sniffed. “New,” he proclaimed.

New, indeed. There was something fresh-minted about it, the way every leaf on every tree proclaimed itself to her eyes, but it looked old. Like the park back home, before it had gone to seed and the local kids started smoking in the bushes and leaving trash scattered everywhere. Sarah moved forward slowly, half expecting it all to vanish like a mirage. But the grass scrunched under her feet, and the obelisk she passed was smooth and solid under her trailing hand.

There was the bridge she’d run across, its parapet made of rough-hewn stone. Sarah walked toward it, holding her breath, but it was just as real, its cobbles smoothed by the passage of many feet. She stood blinking, trying to comprehend it all. Over there was the other bridge, the higher one with its double arch, and beneath both bridges the stream chuckled softly. Beds of tulips and daffodils nodded behind her, proof that Umardelin was pulling this from her mind  _now_ , as those flowers hadn’t been there when she met Jareth here.

“Wow,” she murmured.

“You know this place, my lady?” Sir Didymus asked.

“It’s the park from my hometown,” Sarah said, her voice dreamy. The unreality – the surreality – of it struck her again. Who would’ve thought that the girl from Haverstraw, New York, who used to wear renaissance dresses to the local park, would have become Queen of a faerie realm?

She took another step, turning slowly, a smile breaking over her lips. “You did this for me,” she said, not to her friends but to the Labyrinth itself. “It’s beautiful, I love it. Thank you.”

Sarah didn’t really expect an answer, though if there was one, she would’ve imagined it might be a pulse from the key around her neck. She caught it up and gave it a brief squeeze, and then the kingdom answered her. Not in the key, but in the park, the trees and flowers nodding to her as if in a breeze that wasn’t there, as clear a ‘you are welcome’ as she could’ve wished.

As Ludo and Sir Didymus watched, Sarah tipped her head back and breathed in the fragrance of the flowers and the sweet hay-like scent of the grass, unconsciously holding onto the key to the kingdom. The two of them glanced at each other and shared a nod. She was their queen, indeed.

The rest of their tour was less eventful, covering part of the forest and the hedge maze, but steering clear of the Bog of Stench. All seemed as it had been during her most recent run, though revitalized. The hedges were neat again, though Sarah realized she couldn’t see any clipped leaves that would indicate they’d been pruned.

As the day darkened and they returned to the castle, they found that Jareth had arranged for dinner again. He was clearly doing his best to wine and dine her, only this day’s meal was a feast for just the two of them, composed of endless courses of elegant tidbits, what felt like a hundred brief tastes of perfection. Delicate greens with slivers of crisp vegetables; pastry stuffed with creamy cheese, delectable figs, and nuts; rich soup thick with some sort of squash and lightly spiced; glazed and roasted meats that melted like butter on her tongue; and tarts sweetened with honey. Not only food, but four different wines throughout the meal, each of them tasting the way she’d imagined wine would taste when she read about it as a teenager. None of the bitterness or sharpness of alcohol as she’d known it Aboveground, these were wines like velvet on her tongue, rich and ripe with fruit flavors, or clean and crisp as an autumn breeze. The last, a dessert wine, was like rare nectar with none of its cloying overtones.

Once it was all cleared away, Jareth rose and offered her his hand with a slight bow. “My lady, would you care to dance?” he asked softly, and music seemed to come from the very walls.

Her chin went up, raising her brows with the casual haughtiness of born royalty. “What, you request a boon such as that without even a peach as an offering?” she teased, eyes glimmering with mischief.

“You just consumed an entire dinner,” Jareth pointed out, grinning wickedly. “Any item of which, including the wines, could have enchanted to drive you mad with desire for me. Though I’m not certain how I’d know if said spell was in effect.”

Sarah leaned toward him, answering him smile for smile. “Really? Did one of those spells backfire on you in the past, Your Majesty? It would explain how you ended up so obsessed with a boring little human girl.”

The humor faded from his gaze. “You are not boring, my Sarah. Not in the slightest.”

“There would be people that would argue that. These days, at least,” she pointed out, her smile softly lingering.

“They are either blind, or fools,” Jareth said dismissively. “Dance with me, Sarah, for love’s sake. No spells are required to bewitch either of us with the other.”

Spoken like that, how could she refuse? Sarah thought this would segue into seduction, but no, Jareth just wanted to dance with her. And as before, they moved together in perfect harmony, not a step out of place. All the while he gazed into her eyes with an expression that was slightly too serious. Sarah would’ve expected affectionate teasing, or perhaps a bit of leering, but Jareth simply looked at her as if drinking her in against the hours they would be apart.

Softly, trying to cajole him, she murmured, “Very nice, Jareth. You keep this up, I might just decide to let you keep me.”

“Oh, I am going to give you all the reasons in the world to stay,” he said with a touch more fervency than she expected. “You are my champion and my queen, Sarai, and I will not lose you again.”

She could only smile, and steal a kiss to his cheek when they spun again. “You won’t.”

Jareth walked her to her rooms once it was all over, leaving her with a kiss to her hand, much to her own surprise, the implication of her journey home the next morning unstated between them. It had been unexpected, especially on this last night, but she couldn’t blame him really. They had barely been out of one another’s company for the last day and a half. The separation wasn’t going to be easy, she knew that, and obviously he did, too. Perhaps spending this night in their own rooms was a rehearsal for tomorrow’s parting. He kissed her again, whispered, “Until the morning, my love,” and left her to it.

The queen’s suite had windows that would catch the sunrise, and Jareth had arranged for linens and the like—again in colors that would complement her, royal purple this time. Counting the bedroom itself, a sitting room with massive bookshelves, a dressing room, and a privy, the total square footage was probably more than her apartment –  _her apartment_ \- and thinking about that was a jarring note in an otherwise … well, fairy-tale perfect day. Sarah set herself instead to thinking of how best to furnish the space, what sorts of draperies she would want for the large canopied bed, which books she wanted to bring over. 

Those kinds of mundane details only made her shake her head again. So strange to imagine; her own place here within the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, further cementing that she belonged here. Belonged in the Queen’s suite.  _Belonged_ . An ordinary girl with princessly pretensions, who’d grown up into a serious and pragmatic woman, and now the place that echoed with belonging was here, in this castle, among these royal furnishings. After all these years, it felt both perfect and surreal.

The steam coming from the alcove in the corner caught her eye as she wondered how she would distract herself enough to sleep. The notes of jasmine and vanilla floated softly through the room. The realization hit her that he must have ordered a bath for her, or could have very well have magicked the hot scented water for her himself. Sarah had to grin; he was coming to know her almost too well. Carefully unlacing her gown and stripping out of her undergarments, she climbed gingerly into the tub with a sigh. Unlike the one in her apartment, she could stretch her legs out, but not enough that she had to brace them. With a sigh of relief, she let everything slip from her mind, systemically allowing her thoughts to close. 

She wasn’t even sure how long she lingered there, floating weightless, just herself, alone in this moment of peace. At some point before her skin began to prune, she drew herself out of the bath. Knowing instinctively that there would be a gown in the chest-of-drawers, Sarah slipped into it and made her way to the bed, sliding beneath the fresh linens. Curling onto her side, her gaze was drawn to the doors to lead out to her own small balcony, the view through the glass currently unimpeded by curtains. The newly-named queen gazed at the view with a languid contentment. Plush, the night looked here, the truest indigo she’d ever seen, the platinum of the stars against it tugging at her heart. Reflecting on the last two days, it was easy to feel overwhelmed. Of all the ways she had expected this run to end, she’d be lying if she said that she’s suspected anything like this. Returned to this place as a Champion and social worker in search of a missing child, she would be leaving a Queen. Not only a Queen, but the Goblin King’s Queen. 

There it was again, that nervous little sigh. There was no way to block all of the worrisome thoughts. She’d been all too right the day before when she’d said it would be complicated. There was no way that she could just drop her entire life, her  _mundane_ life. There were too many things she wanted to do, had yet to manage, but she knew she would be expected her to acknowledge the terms of breaking the High King’s curse. How exactly did you ask your boss for a week off in the middle of summer vacation, with nothing available, because her boyfriend, the Goblin King, was still under the command of the curse until she was crowned Queen? Even more, what about time off for her coronation? The thought just made her turn away from the gorgeous view to bury her head in the pillow.

And, if she were brutally honest, she had not the slightest idea in the world how to be a queen, outside of practical knowledge and storybooks. As wonderful a place as she had found, it was fraught with its own dangers. It was not going to be easy for her to fit both her lives into one. Most especially while continuing the lie of the fae’s existence.

Another groan. And there was how to react to the news of Lucy’s reappearance to consider. All of those years of acting would help, but how was she going to do in the long-term?

That thought had her sitting up-right in bed, giving a harassed grumble, before sweeping back the sheets and climbing out.  _**Enough.** _ _Enough, enough,_ _**enough** _ _._ She would savor her own separate space another night. She wouldn’t lay alone and pondersome tonight. Bare feet on the cold stone of the hallway, she silently made her way to the end of the hallway and just as stealthily let herself into his rooms. The hour found him sound asleep in the bed he claimed he only kept for company. As he slept, she took a moment to appreciate this man who, for the second time, had made an utter chaos of her life. His hair was mussed, the pale blonde tousled by sleep, the man himself shirtless and out like a light. Unsurprisingly, he’d been right about his choice of color suiting him better. The royal blue sheets looked as good with his fair hair and pale skin as they did against her own coloring, and as she slipped in beside him, he woke and gazed at her blearily. “Sarah?” he murmured in a sleep-rough voice.

“Hush, go back to sleep,” she told him, snuggling down. “This is not what you think. The room is beautiful, amazing, and I’m grateful for everything you did. And I’m not here for … anything else. No expectations. Nothing about tomorrow or anything going forward. Tonight, I just … wanted to be with you.”

Jareth wrapped an arm around her and gathered her close. “As I wish to be with you.” As they both drifted toward sleep – and he threw a leg over hers, cuddling even more insistently – she heard him whispering against her hair, “My love, my Sarah, my heart…”

The next morning, for better or worse, would be her return.

 


	33. The Return Aboveground

Morning had never been so unwelcome, though it arrived with Jareth’s voice murmuring in her ear and his hand rubbing her back. “Wake, love. It’s time.” And the regret in his tone was plain. Sarah blinked herself to full awareness, remembering the arrangements they’d made. This was the morning she had to return.

With a grumbling groan, Sarah rolled him over, burrowing down atop him. “Don’ wanna get up,” she muttered. And when he would’ve protested, she nipped at his throat, making Jareth gasp. “Do I really have to?”  _It’s too soon,_ her mind thought, still sleepy and not wanting to think reasonably.  _Give me a good reason to stay a little longer._

For the moment, it seemed he would give in, nuzzling her hair affectionately. His hands – his exquisitely gloveless hands – stroked her flanks and trailed up her spine, caressing away the last of her early-morning stiffness. And stirring the slumbering warmth in her belly. Perhaps her departure could be delayed, just a little… 

Any romantic inclinations she had were interrupted by voices in the hall – familiar ones. They both glanced up then, Sarah sitting upright quickly. “I suggest you dress hastily,” Jareth said. “Your allies intend to see you off. Unless you prefer to meet them as you are?”

“All right, point. Point. I’m up.” Without hesitating, Sarah was off the bed, and ran behind a screen, snatching the clothes that he had thoughtfully summoned earlier on the way. The nightgown she wore was just a little too short and sheer to let Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus see her in it. It was one thing to know that they had all grown-up; it was quite another to be caught-out like that. Especially when all three were still mostly in the dark about the details of her more recent history with the King. “My God, how am I even going to explain this to them? Hoggle’s going to give me both barrels when he realizes what all of this means.” 

Jareth rolled leisurely to his feet, summoning clothing to him with magic. That time, Sarah saw the clothes disappear from the rack behind the curtain, only to reappear on their master a second later. The king spoke with the same controlled calm that informed his every moment. “Hoggle is a dedicated bachelor and would scoff at any hint of alliance. The knights, however, will likely consider this  _your_ conquest. It could not be otherwise, after all. You are no one’s damsel in need of rescue, nor are you some silly princess in a tower. Queen, and Champion, and if you are in my bed it is because you rule there as well.” And then a mischievous smirk curved his lips. “Sometimes, anyway. Not for nothing did you accept me as your King.”

“Shut it, Your Majesty,” Sarah growled, though the warmth in his voice made her smile in spite of herself. She was luckily dressed and presentable by the time the allies knocked at her door … across the hall. Trying not to wince, Sarah opened the door of Jareth’s chambers and stepped out behind them. “I’m here,” she said, hoping to forestall any explanation.

Hoggle gave her the most withering look she’d ever had the misfortune to receive, and scoffed under his breath, but Ludo was pleased to see her as always and Sir Didymus bowed. “My lady, we claim the honor of escorting you,” the fox-knight proclaimed.

“As is your right,” Jareth said. “Come. There is a mirror in the tower which has already lent itself to enchantment.”

And so they all trooped up the winding stairs, standing at last before an ornately-framed mirror that gleamed with its own mellow light. When they stood there, Ludo put a paw on Sarah’s shoulder. “Sarah come back?” he asked.

For a few seconds, she wanted to break down bawling.  _I don’t want to go back!_ Her desperate thoughts chased themselves in her head.  _I don’t care, I don’t want to go if there’s any chance in hell I might not be able to return._ _**This** _ _is my home, my kingdom, the home of my heart and my dreams._

“Sarah has so sworn,” Jareth told the night-troll, and Sarah nodded, wrapping her fingers around the key. It radiated warmth and surety into her palm; Umardelin was hers and she belonged to it. She would not be _allowed_ to vanish again.

“I love you, all of you,” Sarah said, and even Hoggle blushed a bit despite the way he rolled his eyes. “And I need you. I still need you, I need this place. I _will_ be back.”

“Of course!” Sir Didymus said, but his voice was a trifle too bombastic, trying to convince himself as well as her. Ambrosius only whined and licked her hand.

Of all of them, the fox-knight had always believed in her the most. Even when  _she_ had doubted herself, he never had. Through all their adventures in her dreams, he had followed her lead and always had faith that Sarah would get them through. She knelt before him, meeting his dark eyes steadily. “I promise you, it won’t be that long this time. I will return.”

“I await the day, my lady,” he said, and swept a bow.

Sarah leaned forward, kissed his cheek, and said again, “I swear.”

With that, and a touch of prompting from their king, the allies saluted her and took their leave. Sarah got a little teary at that, then laughed it off and waved a solemn goodbye as they exited. Now it was just her and Jareth again, and he cast the spell with words that chimed like crystal. The mirrored surface rippled and turned misty.

But when the time came, she had to kiss him goodbye … and goodbye again, and Jareth held her tightly for a third kiss. “Jareth,” Sarah said softly, “We can’t keep doing this. This is hard enough for me already. C’mon.”

His hands on her waist drew her even closer, and he kissed her temple with an aggrieved little noise. “Must you go?” he asked plaintively.

Sarah sighed, and nudged her head against him even as she clutched him a little tighter. She didn’t really  _want_ to leave, but duty called. And she had the ability to come back this time. “Yes, I must. We both know I must. And you  _agreed_ to it. We already discussed that there would be too many questions–”

“I am aware of what I promised,” he reminded her, with a touch of his old peremptory manner. She took a deep breath, looking up at him steadily. Yelling would do no good and neither would negotiations, not with that tone. At that look, he softened and nuzzled her hair. “Sarah, understand, it is not that I wish to hold you captive. You trusted me to let you go, and I am trusting you to come back. But … after so many years apart, and such struggle for you to regain both belief and trust in me, I fear what may happen once you leave my side.”

“Jareth.” Within all the myriad sides she had discovered in this man, she knew fear didn’t come to him easily. Her understanding of his years here now made that all too clear. That he did so now was an indicator of just how serious he was, about her and about this moment. Sarah hugged him tight, memorizing his scent, the feel of his strong lean body embracing her. _Mine, the Goblin King is mine,_ she thought, branding it on her mind against the rationality of the world Above. “How is that even possible now?” she scolded gently. “I’ve come too far to go back now. This isn’t just our little shadow-play anymore, Jareth. I made a promise, to you and _whoever_. You and this kingdom won me back on your own, in the end. I _chose_ to make the choice. I _chose_ to be with you, _chose_ to be queen. You may have lured me here in the first place, but I chose the King in the end. I _will_ come back. It’s not like you can’t find me now.” She glanced up briefly, a knowing little grin on her face. “Besides, having the side benefits in real life definitely adds to the allure.”

That made him chuckle, and she drew back to look him fully in the eyes. “In all seriousness, Jareth. I’m wearing the key to the kingdom, aren’t I? That’s a pretty good indication that I’m not going to tell myself this was all a dream.”

Said necklace was currently under a bit of fae glamour, so it appeared to be a smaller key on a silver chain with just two crystals adorning it. Still, Sarah wore it inside her blouse, next to her skin, and she imagined she could feel her heartbeat echoed by the Labyrinth.

“I know all of this,” Jareth admitted. “Yet it is still difficult. Were I the man I once was, I would never let you set foot outside my realm … but my courage must be equal to your own. Sarah … go, now, but come back to me. As soon as you can.”

“I will. Just give me a couple of days,” she told him, slipping out of his arms. For a moment, she just stood there and took one last look. Just that glance made her heart ache; what must it be doing to him to trust her? It was so much to ask of him, with both of their history, and yet he was trying. Turning away from him to go physically hurt, but she made herself do it. She had a responsibility beyond this world, back in her own. It was time. 

Just before she gazed into the looking glass, the Queen of Umardelin looked over her shoulder with a blinding grin. “I. Love. You.  _That_ you won, Jareth. Don’t doubt it now.” With that, she faced the mirror, taking a deep breath. As she touched the glass, the reflection in it changed, showing her bedroom behind her, and when she looked she was there. As easily as that, not even a trace of glitter to show the change. 

Just being in her bedroom, with the normal sounds of the city rising outside, was utterly surreal after Umardelin. She could only stand there for long moments, staring at the smooth white walls, thinking that they looked odd after stone hung with tapestries. Strange how her baseline could change so much, so quickly … but then, Umardelin had been in her heart for years.

Sarah shook herself, knowing she needed to get ready. Just a quick glance at her alarm clock told her that. There had been enough delay on her part that she was running behind her usual hour to wake, even with the time differences between the Underground and home. In a way, it was a blessing; she didn’t have  _time_ to worry too deeply.

She was on guard for any signs that her mind was trying to rationalize away the last two days, but it didn’t seem to be happening. Jareth and her friends and the Labyrinth were as real and solid in her memory as the room she stood in. And, she was determined, the events of the day wouldn’t change that. She was a child of two worlds, now and finally. Sarah Williams, the girl who had challenged the Labyrinth for the return of her brother, who had given up her dreams of stardom to be a protector of children, had now, years later, emerged a second time from that world as the Queen, and had won the heart of the Goblin King. Nothing could, or would, change that now.

And, on that, note, the Queen of Umardelin needed to get herself some coffee and get to the office before she ended up looking for another job. Sarah had to laugh at the level of grandness her thoughts had granted her before she got a hold of herself and started for the kitchen. Not to mention, Sarah thought, her mind switching gears rapidly then, she’d likely have several calls about Lucy that needed to be answered. She would need to get in contact with the Merritts and do what damage control was necessary. And she’d need to see if Detective Rosenfield had any leads in the case and figure out what she needed to do there, assuming it was necessary. With any luck, Jareth would be right and the matter would quickly drop on its own without any help on her part.

First, though, she wanted a shower. A long bath last night and a quick wash-up this morning weren’t quite the same, and Sarah made a mental note to discuss indoor plumbing with Jareth. Hot showers in the morning would make a huge difference. Surely that was something with could be accomplished by means of magic. And coffee. There  _had_ to be a way to work around the coffee situation. 

Refreshed, she put on underclothes and did her makeup, humming softly. When she realized it was the song that had been playing in the ballroom, Sarah smirked at herself. Without thinking, she started to pull her hair into a twist, then stopped herself. There was no rule that said she had to wear her hair up at her job; it had just become habit so that others would take her seriously. It had never been a personal choice, really; just another form of armor before going into battle daily. And there was no real need for that kind of metal anymore. That thought in mind, she released her hair and shook it back into its natural waves. No more hiding who she was, pretending that she was someone she wasn’t.

It was a small step, but felt necessary, once again claiming herself, reclaiming the girl who had slipped back into her skin just before scaling the bridge within the Bog. And that Sarah would never have tolerated her hair swept up for longer than an hour at a time, thinking that only old people wore their hair like that. She could still remember making a face in the mirror as she pulled her hair out of the complicated French braid Karen had ordered her hair into for her and her father’s wedding. When she had been young, she had long considered it her greatest beauty. Remembering that, Sarah couldn’t help a small, knowing smile. It seemed that in the birth of Sarai at Jareth’s hand, her younger self had been truly freed, as well. And Sarah found that that thought couldn’t make her happier.

Nodding decisively, she finished with a swipe of lip gloss and considered her reflection, noticing that the key around her neck – she’d worn it into the shower – retained its original appearance in the mirror.

She touched the key, and felt the pulse of Umardelin in her fingertips. A thought came to her then, and she grinned. Why not? Jareth certainly did it often enough, and with the way things were between them, it would be a useful skill. It probably wouldn’t even work, but … why not try?

Closing her eyes, still lightly touching the key, Sarah focused her mind and will on a single task. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and tried to call that golden haze of magic.

She was rewarded with the lightest pressure on her shoulders, and opened her eyes to see the outfit she’d chosen settling in place on her body. “ _Yes_ ,” Sarah murmured, grinning fiercely, and laughed out loud for sheer joy. Yes, like it or not, the Goblin King was wearing off on her.

 

 

The very first words Sarah heard, walking in to work Thursday morning, were “Did you hear about the Merritts?”

“I did,” she responded with a relieved smile. “Thank God Lucy’s home safe. She’s always been good at hide-and-seek, but this was her best yet.”

That occasioned general laughter, though Sarah caught Amy’s eyes on her, looking thoughtful. Throughout the day, she gradually realized she was under some scrutiny, Amy and a few of the other women watching her speculatively. After a few paranoid moments wondering if her adventures Underground had left her marked by faerie magic, Sarah shook herself and got back to work. All desk-work, today, filling out applications and filing and making reports. She had calls to make as well, to reassure Alli and speak with the detective, who was just as overjoyed at Lucy’s return. As Jareth had said, no one seemed to want to investigate the circumstances of Lucy’s disappearance too closely.

About one in the afternoon, Sarah decided to go for lunch at the cafe around the corner. Only when she was already in line did she realize one of her coworkers had followed her. “Hey, Amy,” Sarah said, trying to sound casual. “You should’ve called me, I would’ve gotten you something.”

“I thought we’d have lunch together somewhere _other_ than our desks,” Amy said with a winning grin.

Raising a dark brow, Sarah gave her a long look, trying not to smirk. As busy as she had been all morning, she had felt the looks from time to time. The attention had unnerved her a bit, but she had simply shaken it off. What had flagged itself as unusual to Amy? “Well, then, you  _really_ should have said something and I would have waited. Good thing you were able to find me. What brought that thought on? Especially on a Thursday? You usually save that for Friday, Amy.” 

The older woman’s smirk was positively wicked. “Yes, but it seems like a good time for an outing. Maybe congratulations are in order, hmm?”

“Congratulations?” Sarah asked, but it was her turn to order then. She did so distractedly, turning to Amy once she moved aside to wait for her sandwich.

“Congratulations,” Amy said firmly, after she’d placed her own order while Sarah fumed in silence. “Who’s the lucky guy, Sarah?”

That lead Sarah to frown in annoyance. And so it began. It hadn’t even been six hours yet, no one had the slightest clue that she’d been gone a whole day and two in Underground time, and already there was speculation. Somehow she had thought that, maybe, just  _maybe_ she could keep some aspect of her new situation under wraps, but she obviously wasn’t hiding it well. Trying not to sound too defensive, she gave Amy a look. “And just where do you get that from? It’s only been since yesterday that you saw me and I’ve been wrapped up in this case with Lucy Merritt. How on earth could I even have the time to have seen anyone, Amy? Seriously, what on Earth brought this on?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Amy laughed. “Let’s see, you’re not wearing those pearl earrings you’ve worn at least three days a week for the last year. You _are_ wearing a new and very pretty necklace. Most interestingly, though, you’ve got your hair down. Got something to hide, Sarah?” At those teasing words, Amy brushed at the dark fall of Sarah’s hair, and broke out in a rash of laughter as it bared her neck.

Sarah flinched away, glaring at her – and the other customers in line, who were happily observing this little bit of New York street theater. Amy just arched an eyebrow. “Well, well. I see there definitely  _is_ a reason you’ve been mooning around with that grin on your face. C’mon, Sarah, dish.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, grabbing her food. There wasn’t much room inside, but the cafe had outdoor seating as well. “If I’m smiling, it’s because Lucy Merritt is back home.”

“You don’t smile like _this_ ,” Amy informed her. “When you win and bring a child into safety, you smile like a boxer who just knocked out his opponent. Today you’ve been staring dreamily out the window and _grinning_.”

“You’re imagining things,” Sarah said frostily.

“I’m not imagining the great big hickey on the back of your neck,” Amy chortled, and Sarah flinched. _Dammit, Jareth!_

Amy’s avid gaze reminded her a little too much of the goblins’ predatory eyes, and she bristled. “All right,  _look_ ,” Sarah growled. “What I do, and who I do it with? None of your business, unless it interferes with business, and this doesn’t.” She saw two of their other coworkers walking toward them, with equally bright interest, and pitched her voice to carry. “Nor is it any business of the rest of you.” 

“Whoa, girl,” Amy said, raising her hands, as the other two – Kathy and Emily – froze in their tracks. “Sarah, nobody’s trying to sew a scarlet letter on you. This’s the first time in over a year you’re actually focused on something besides _work_ and your little brother. Hell, we want to throw you a party!”

Sarah sighed, and dropped her head into her hands. Amy reached out and patted her arm tenderly. “It’s okay, hon. We all want to see you happy. And you looked  _very_ happy today. So, let me ask one more time: who’s the lucky guy?” Sarah just groaned, resigned to her fifteen minutes of office fame. That was the cue for Kathy and Emily to hurry in and order some food so they could join the gossip.

Only once they were all seated, and eyeing her excitedly, did she begin to speak. “Okay. Yes, there’s a guy. Yes, it’s something new, but I knew him a long time. He’s … he kinda helped me work some things out with the Merritt case. It’s kind of complicated. But yes, I’m happy. There, are we good?”

All three of them rolled their eyes. “ _Complicated?_ ” Amy echoed. “God, Sarah, is he married?”

“ _No,_ ” she said sharply. Just the mere thought was enough to give her a migraine. 

Emily propped her chin on her hands, still watching Sarah keenly. “So, what’s his name, what does he do, when do we meet him … Sarah, come on.  _Spill_ . We want all the details!”

_I was not prepared for this,_ she groaned inwardly. Improv had never been her strong suit, though she’d learned it well enough. She just didn’t have to  _like_ it. “Fine. His name’s Jareth … Kingsley. He’s British. Mostly what he does is annoy the hell out of me, but he has his redeeming qualities, too.” Sarah took a large bite of her sandwich to forestall any further questions.

It didn’t work. “You left out the part about when we meet him,” Kathy pointed out.

While Sarah chewed and tried not to choke at  _that_ mental image, Amy added, “Got a picture? I want to see the studmuffin who finally got you out of your ‘all work, no play’ rut.”

“No,” she said, swallowing without even tasting her sandwich. “No, I don’t have photos. He’s a bit camera-shy. And he has a very busy schedule. I don’t think we’d be able to arrange a meet-up. Besides, it might become a long-distance thing. He’s got responsibilities back home.”

And just as she congratulated herself on  _that_ piece of ridiculous fiction, Amy sighed. “He  _is_ married, isn’t he? That’s why you can’t show him off.”

It was a question calculated to draw more info out of Sarah, stung by the insinuation. “He is  _not_ married! I just don’t want to parade him around in front of you jackals! He’s … look, he’s  _nobility_ , you shameless gossips, and I don’t want to be on the front page of the UK version of the Enquirer.”

“Ohhh, Sarah’s dating a prince?” Emily teased.

“Or this is all an elaborate lie to cover up something,” Kathy added mischievously.

_Yeah, like the fact that I’m dating a king, not a prince. A king of the fae. And giving myself a migraine trying to keep my story straight, here._ “You’re all hilarious. Look, guys. I really wish I could introduce Jareth to you, but it’s just not in the cards, all right? Be happy for me. And we’d better get back to work soon.”

“As if you can’t take a long lunch break for once…” Amy began, but trailed off.

A very familiar pair of warm gloved hands had just settled gently on Sarah’s shoulders, and that velvet voice spoke in amused tones. “Of course I would be delighted to make the acquaintance of your friends, Sarah,” Jareth said from right behind her. “Your wish is, as always, my command.”

All Sarah could do was freeze, wide-eyed, and slowly look up over her shoulder. She couldn’t help the anxiety over what exactly she would see there. How on Earth was she going to explain this? And him, in all his Goblin King glory? She had only asked for a few days.  _Oh_ _ shit, Jareth! _ _ I was not ready to star in ‘A Glitterstorm in Manhattan’ yet! _

 


	34. Walking Between Worlds

When Sarah rolled her eyes upward in dread, she was  _ slightly _ relieved to see that Jareth was currently passing for human. But it was also weird as hell to see him in a suit, with  _ normal _ hair and brows. For a moment she could only blink in surprise, while he grinned wolfishly at her.

“Well, hello there,” Amy said, and Sarah was forced to introduce him around as he took the seat next to her. Inhumanly graceful, but it seemed only she saw that. The rest just watched with eager eyes, overjoyed at this new revelation. Sarah wondered briefly just how solemn and staid they’d thought her, to be so excited by evidence of spontaneity. But then, Jareth _was_ the king of everything she’d tried to deny in herself.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” she told him, with a smile that she hoped conveyed the need to pretend normality a little longer. “How on earth did you even find me?”

“I finished up my morning’s business sooner than even I expected,” Jareth replied smoothly. “As for how I found you, the same as it ever was, Sarah: serendipity.”

“Ah, yeah. Unfortunately, your timing was a little off this time. I’m sorry; I don’t have a long enough lunch break to let you schmooze with my friends,” she said, sighing inwardly. Was it too much to ask for _one day_ , just one day back in her real life before magic came calling?

By the gleam in his eye, yes, it was too much. Before Jareth could reply, Amy spoke up. “Come on back to the office, if you have time. Sarah always takes a late lunch, it’s only a couple hours before she leaves. We can finish the interrogation there.”

That got laughter from the rest, and a chuckle from Jareth. “Would that I could,” he replied. “Someday perhaps, but I have business this afternoon that requires my attention. Besides, Sarah would not appreciate the distraction of having to police me.”

“Aww, she doesn’t trust you to run loose yet?” Amy laughed, making it clear she was only a joking.

“Not for more than ten seconds at a time,” Sarah snarked back, arching her brows at him. Clearly, not a single of them had enough intuition to acknowledge anything more than a good-looking man. If they had the slightest of the chaos said man could cause, was causing… “He’s not completely housebroken.”

“Nor are you completely tamed to my hand, my fierce little falcon,” Jareth purred back. That earned him a glare than only widened his grin. “To be honest, my Sarah, I do not think you _can_ be tamed … nor am I exerting particular effort toward that goal.”

_ Yeah, good luck on that, Goblin King. Gonna have a while trying to obtain that. _ “Yes, well, I just want you domesticated enough for polite company – which this pack of heathens I call coworkers is decidedly  _ not _ ,” she shot back, not even resisting the urge to smirk at him appropriately.

“You forget, Sarah my love, I am accustomed to much more proper company than is to be found in your country,” Jareth teased. “As well as decidedly _heathenish_ companions. The mark of character is that it does not change substantially no matter what its surroundings – and your character, Sarah, is beyond all reproach. You are ever yourself.”

Okay, they were starting skim a little too close to the truth of their situation. Time to break this up before she slipped and said something that would give them away. There hadn’t been enough time yet for her to firm up her cover-story and they were winging this a little too much. And not to mention, the ties of real life beckoned. “Enough flattery,” she finally said, as the girls exchanged raised-eyebrow looks. She managed to shoo him off, Jareth bowing to the table as he left, and scarfed down the last of her sandwich while internally coming to grips with the fact that the formerly-separate sides of her life had just collided with no warning. It was too late to choke now.

Once they headed back to work, though, the commentary started. “Holy hell, that accent,” Amy remarked. “I don’t know how you manage not to just melt into the seat.”

“That’s the difference, Amy, I _know_ him. You get used to it.” Not even partly true, but it was better than admitting that he got to her.

“And all that ‘Sarah my love’ stuff,” Emily added. “Hot damn, he even talks like a freakin’ Disney prince!”

Sarah couldn’t help a snort of utter disbelief. Of all of the comparisons they could make, that was the most hilariously painful. Perish the thought! “Not hardly!” she retorted. “You guys have to understand that you’re only seeing him at his most charming. Disney wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole; they’d likely run screaming in the opposite direction, really.” Maybe the gist of their tale would have a curiosity to him, when what was said was first said, but could never have been ever said about the Goblin King himself. Everyone’s Uncle Walt would surely have been horrified at the association. She couldn’t resist a laugh at the thought.

“Yeah, Disney doesn’t tend to show great big hickies,” Kathy teased.

“Shut up,” Sarah muttered, blushing as she combed her hand through the length of her hair, unconsciously hiding the mark from view. Especially now, she was all too aware of aspects of his history – and hers – that were well above a PG-13 rating and had been for some time. Another _very_ un-Disney thing. “Anyway, all of that charm isn’t always so charming, _especially_ when he’s using it to be a snarky bastard. Something that Jareth practically has a degree in. In fact, he can be an absolute _reprobate_ about most things.”

“I get the feeling you like that about him, don’t you, Sarah?” Amy said musingly. “You like that he won’t fall at your feet. And I bet he likes that you won’t swoon. Okay, the pieces are falling into place here. Yeah, okay, for the first minute I wondered how the hell that ever happened, but now I get it.”

That made Sarah stare at her for a moment, a little startled to hear someone say it out loud. It had been the draw from the first, she admitted to herself, from that very first meeting. Something that had made both of them notice one another in a more real way than they had seen anyone else in their lives. A challenge neither could resist. A little self-conscious smile of acceptance flitted across her lips, making her shake her head in amusement. “Yeah, well. Good for you,” Sarah murmured, not looking over at her friend. The smile crept back, Sarah chuckling quietly at herself, at them. “It took me,  _ us _ , a little longer to figure that out. Years, even.”

“He’s a catch,” Amy told her. “And so are you. I’m glad for you, Sarah.”

“I wonder a little, but we’ll see what happens,” she said, glancing up at Amy with bright eyes, before adding under her breath, ”Yeah, he’s not doing not too bad for a guy who used to give me major evil kidnapper-creep vibes, back in the day.” She had to laugh at herself for even saying it, and fortunately Amy seemed to take it as a joke.

 

…

 

The rest of the day was such a flurry of paperwork that she managed to bury herself in her work enough to avoid the questions she knew they were all dying to ask about how long she’d known Jareth and how they’d met. The way everyone kept watching her, a question in their eyes made it clear that they had better get their story in order very, very soon. At last Sarah headed home, catching the subway, exhausted from more than just work.

_ This is how it’s going to be, _ she thought, staring out the window at the tunnels rushing past.  _ You’re going to live a lie, to everyone you know. Sarah Williams, social worker by day, Goblin Queen by night and on weekends. _

It was worth it, though. She couldn’t walk away from her duty, from her work Aboveground, but she also couldn’t deny her calling to the Underground. For now, the best compromise was living two lives.

Two lives that intersected in unexpected ways – Jareth was lounging outside her apartment door. That startled her, but she didn’t allow herself to show it. There hadn’t been time after lunch to consider why he’d chosen that moment or what he had done after. All of this had been far sooner than she had expected. Especially since someone had promised her time to adjust.

Stopping herself a few feet from where he stood, Sarah crossed her arms to look at him with one fine black brow raised, her tone chiding. “So, that little performance was unexpected, Your Majesty. I seem to remember someone telling me, just before the curse was broken, that travel between the realms was difficult.”

“Difficult, but not impossible,” he replied. “You wished I were there, and so I was. I do hope I didn’t cause you _too_ much difficulty.”

Her first reaction was to protest, starting to frown at the implication that she had done so, then remembered.  _ Look, guys. I really wish I could introduce Jareth to you, but it’s just not in the cards, all right? _ Dammit, the man was actually right. Once again, she was reminded that she really had to be more careful with the way she worded her thoughts. Sarah smirked at him as she unlocked the door. 

If she was honest with him, his wholly-unexpected appearance to the girls at the restaurant had scared the hell out of her for a moment, but she wouldn’t admit that. “Except for the part that the fae king just strolled up to us with no prior warning, maybe just a little,” Sarah murmured over her shoulder, pitching her voice lower as she opened the door. “You and I gonna need to agree on a cover story, you know. So we don’t accidentally tell people over here different versions of how we met, and stuff. God knows we’re not going to tell them anything approaching the truth. ”

“Indeed we do,” Jareth said, and as they both stepped inside the apartment, his glamour melted away, exchanging the handsome passing-for-mortal man for the magnificent king. Glancing back at the whisper of magic she felt slip past her, Sarah couldn’t help catching her breath, and he moved toward her with a wicked predatory smile. “I had other ideas in mind for the immediate future, my Sarah.”

_ Oh my God, here we go again. I have to learn to not let him distract me like this. At some point. Maybe. _ Sarah slowly backed away from him, but she was smiling knowingly… and backing toward the hall that led to her bedroom. “I see. So that discussion is on hold for the moment, hmm? So, the King of the Goblins can’t bear to be away from me for even a full day. Jareth, really. I had expected for you to head back to Umardelin after that; instead, I find you hanging around my door, waiting for me to arrive. Hmm … I have to tell you, Jareth. Seems like I hold the power here.”

“Yours is the power every woman has held since the dawn of time,” he replied in husky voice. “But you will find, my Sarah, my Sarai, my champion and queen … that I _do_ have power over you. Now, power you granted me, power whose exercise you adore.”

“You really are awfully sure of yourself after just one night outside of dreams,” Sarah laughed, but the fine hairs on the nape of her neck were standing up as his strange eyes shone with opalescence. “Your arrogance is showing, Your Highness.”

“My will is as strong,” Jareth laughed back, and swept her gladly into his arms. “And my love for you as great as yours is for me.”

She laced her arms around his neck and sighed. “I would argue with you, but…”

“You cannot,” Jareth said, and kissed her to silence the inevitable protest. “You may have power over me, sweet Sarah, but not enough to deny this.”

Sarah looked him boldly in the eyes, the gleam in her eyes fiery. Her smile was as fierce as it was loving. There was no denying the hold he had on her, the fact that he had, as he always had, her heart; that, now, was inescapable as the tide. But she would never, ever yield to him completely. Nor did she want that of him. Never had there been a moment in her life that had equaled this tumble of conflicting emotions she felt when he was with her, be it locked in sweetness or in battle. Oh, if he thought she would ever willingly relent that, was he ever in for a surprise.

_ I have fought my way here to the Castle, beyond the Goblin City, to take back the future that I had stolen... _

“Truly, Jareth? Bet me.” 

 

 

**~Keep an eye out for the sequel to be posted in the next few days, although 'And My Kingdom as Great' is a current project, updating once a week. And we both thank you all for reading!~**

 

 


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